DEPARTMENT REPORTS. 81 



While I am aware that our course of study is crowded, and it is uot easy to 

 omit anything, I cannot help affirming that our labor system is of sufficient 

 importance to demand the small portion of time I have named for this 

 purpose. 



Two of the great difficulties we have to contend with practically are, finding 

 work for so large a force, especially at those seasons of the year when the 

 farm does not offer much out-of-door laboi", and the lack of competent super- 

 visors of student labor. Men of skill, enei'gy, patience, good nature, coupled 

 with firmness and tact, quick to see and prompt to decide, are needed for this 

 work. To keep competent men for this work only, supervising students three 

 hours in the afternoon, would entail a large additional expense upon the 

 department. What work could be given them profitably when not engaged iu 

 supervision I am unable to say. 



I believe the only practical solution of this question is to train students for 

 this work. Make those who have always been attentive to labor duties, and 

 have acquired some skill in the practical details of farm operations, overseers 

 of gangs and allow them extra compensation tlierefor. Tiie tiiought of some 

 preferment of this kind I fancy would be something of a stimulus to students, 

 make them more thoughtful of and attentive to labor duties. Such supervi- 

 sion would require constant attention and oversight from those in charge, but 

 given some of the conditions I have suggested, I think it would prove an 

 advance method if not an absolute success. Then the marking of the labor 

 performed by the overseer in charge the same as a recitation, I believe will be 

 found advantageous. We find this plan works very well on the farm. We 

 began it as an experiment at the opening of the present College year. So far 

 I am pleased with the plan. 



I may very properly refer here to the labor of the students on the farm 

 during the time covered by this report. Here, as elsewhere, some are found 

 who believe "the former days were better than these," and v.'ith a pride 

 pardonable, perhaps, because of past association, assert quite strongly that 

 students use to work better, more steadily than in these latter days. In other 

 words they fear there is a tendency to decline in the vigor and efficiency of our 

 labor system — that there are more absentees from work and more excusing of 

 students from this exercise than formerly. 



"One generation passeth away and another cometh," but the human nature 

 of both is very like iu its manifestation, and the alumni who glance at this 

 report will pardon me for saying what I believe they will admit as too tiue, 

 that in their class, tlie best of all, there were some shirks, some drones, some 

 good fellows who came to College constitutionally tired and never got rested 

 during their college course so that they engaged in labor with any spirit. The 

 classes of the present day do not greatly differ from their predecessors. I can 

 say very decidedly, so far as my department is concerned, that students hcive 

 been as punctual and attentive to labor duties as we could reasonably expect. 

 We have been, and we intend to be, as strict in enforcing labor rules as we are 

 in enforcing those requiring attendance upon classes. We are not inclined to 

 the Utopian idea that the system is perfect or the management faultles.-^, but 

 we are striving with firm heart to realize what we believe is a practical ideal — 

 taking things as they are, not as we might desire them. 



The only answer I need make to any of these doubters in the efficiency of 

 our labor system is to say, that while we have reduced the number of men 

 employed on the farm so as to give more labor for students, with a less number 



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