666 ANNUAL. REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



jijent class of foreigners, men who are not afraid to work with their 

 liands to win from the soil its gifts. Let us beware, lest our native 

 born American sell his birthright. 



A few years ago a teacher in a country school was criticised by a 

 wealthy farmer whose sons she taught. "You have given all our 

 boys," he told her, ''a desire to go to college, and we will have no one 

 left to stay on the farm." This man was well educated and intelli- 

 gent. He did not object to a college education; but he was correct 

 in his opinion that many colleges of the present day educate a boy 

 away from the farm. A reaction, however, is setting in. In New 

 Jersey a book on agriculture has been established by law as a 

 text-book in the common schools. The chemistry course in the 

 Pennsylvania State Normal Schools includes agricultural chemistry, 

 and bur agricultural colleges are being enlarged and improved in 

 equipment. We need educated farmers, and a man graduated from 

 college should be able to return to the farm having lost none of his 

 interest in or practical knowledge of the work, and with a mind 

 so broadened and trained that he may make the farm more profitable, 

 if possible, and, best of all, be enabled to enjoy life to its fullest 

 extenj: because he now sees everything with an intelligent mind. 



The profits on the farm are usually slow, but sure. The farmer 

 rarely becomes bankrupt. Scores of business failures, with some- 

 times the sad accompaniment of suicide and other tragedies, may 

 be cited to one failure on the farm. The farmer escapes the heavier 

 responsibilities and worries that beset the merchant, the manufac- 

 turer, or the man who conducts almost any other business or profes- 

 sion. He is usually healthy. We know from statistics that the 

 longevity of farmers is greater than that of any other class. 



Life in the country is an invaluable benefit to children. The child, 

 born and reared in the country, comes into an inheritance which 

 money cannot buy. While the child in the city grows pale in the 

 foul air of crowded streets; the country boy daily fills his lungs 

 with pure, life-giving oxygen — and grows. Year after year, he lays 

 up a store of vitality which will, later in life, enable him to endure 

 the stress and strain which comes to every man who fights life*ss 

 battles successfully. This may be said of Washington, of Lincoln and 

 scores of our great men of the present day, men who spent almost 

 every day of the growing period of their lives in the pure, open coun- 

 try and who have, when occasion required, endured long stretches 

 of work, responsibility and care, with mind and nerves at the high- 

 est tension. 



While the city boy eats a late breakfast, and takes a trolley to his 

 school, the country boy has been up hours before, and, after feed- 

 ing the stock or plowing for an hour in the fresh morning air, walks 

 two or three miles to school, arriving there so full of vigor that he 

 can scarcely control his overflowing energies, and with such a healthy 

 appetite that the contents of his lunch basket disappear like magic. 

 Perhaps at night one returns to his home in a great city flat and 

 goes to sleep in a tiny bedroom, more like a closet in size, whose 

 only air and light may come from the adjoining apartment. Here 

 he sleeps until he is awakened in the morning by the noise of street 

 traffic. The other, in a room with perhaps two or three windows open 

 to the fresh summer air, is lulled to sleep by the sound of rippling 

 water, the music of frogs and katydids, and awakens in the morning 



