174 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



The experiment of the Bussey Institution is yet too new to 

 make it proper to criticise its methods or predict its success. 

 Its efforts must be tentative, and its officers must learn from 

 experience, what are the needs of those who are to enter on 

 this work as a practical profession. 



With such ample means, and the best intelligence of the 

 community to guide them, it ought to become a source of the 

 widest influence and the greatest good. It is especially 

 valuable as combining high intellectual culture with manual 

 labor. 



For the same reason we welcome the example of Vassar 

 College in organizing a floral department, and encouraging 

 pupils in the intervals of intellectual study to work in their 

 gardens. 



We especially need to conquer the prejudice which connects 

 the idea of manual labor, out doors, with a servile or impov- 

 erished condition. Women, too, must learn to respect the idea 

 of working for money. Labor gains in dignity, instead of los- 

 ing, when it is done for the benefit of others, and not for our 

 own enjoyment. And money is a very simple and convenient 

 test of the value of our work. To work well, and sell the 

 products of your work, is the surest way of benefiting the 

 community. She who, by the improved culture of strawberries, 

 shall put down their price ten cents a box, will place them 

 within the reach of many a poor, feverish sufferer, to whom she 

 cannot directly minister ; and by the intelligent care of her 

 green-house, she may help to produce flowers in such abun- 

 dance, that it will be no longer the exclusive privilege of the rich 

 to place the winter rose in the cold hand of the departed friend. 



Many women have been very successful at the West in cul- 

 tivating farms and gardens, and also in Vineland, New Jersey, 

 where they share in the management of the gardens. 



But we cannot rely mainly upon colleges or schools to make 

 this occupation general among women. Only a small number 

 of those who need out-door occupation will ever be able to 

 attend them, yet if they do their work well their good influence 

 will be widely felt. 



It is not Harvard College alone which has educated New 

 England ; not Amherst to which we owe the rapid improvement 

 in agriculture, during the last few years. So we cannot expect 



