No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 457 



city to select, had been bought at a very high price, and at the end 

 of a years' time, only three of them proved to be worth anything — 

 worth keeping in the herd. Of course, this is an extreme case of the 

 ineflBciency and dishonesty of a college graduate. I would not take 

 it as a typical case, but a number of instances, not so striking, fol- 

 lowed from placing in responsible positions University men, making 

 it difficult to get any man who has been operating a farm by proxy 

 to want to get college men. 



That was the status I found when we organized the Guild. One 

 thing I have learned at our colleges: that the men who have had all 

 this theoretical training which the colleges afford, when they have 

 gone into positions for which they have been recommended, have 

 failed so dismally, that we have decided not to recommend for posi- 

 tions of responsibility, any of our graduates, until they had had a 

 reasonable amount of practical training and experience. It was 

 to secure this practical experience that the Guild was organized. 

 It was to give these men, college men and others, an opportunUv 

 to fit themselves for the management of others' farms, or possibly 

 their own, that this work of the Guild was undertaken. We cover 

 two sides of need: the need of the student to have the opportunity 

 to get this practical training to fit him for the responsibility to be 

 placed upon him, and the need of the farmer, whom either lack of 

 knowledge of agricultural conditions, or pressure of other business, 

 prevents from taking charge of his own farm. So, when some of 

 these men and their neighbors came to me and said ''what can you 

 do to help us; what can you suggest?" I gave them the results of 

 my own experience. I grew up on the farm. I had never been away 

 from the farm until I went to college; when I finished college, I 

 went to teaching agriculture along with these other economic sub- 

 jects, and at the same time had charge of the old farm of five hun- 

 dred acres. I had the same kind of experience as those I have just 

 told you. I had, in a number of instances, taken men who wanted 

 to learn how to farm, to do the work on my farm, under my own 

 supervision, but after a year or so, when he had become competent 

 to take charge of the work, he would want more money than the pro- 

 ceeds of my farm enabled me to pay, and he went to on/e of the 

 agriculturists who could pay him more. I probably do not need to 

 define to this audience the difference between an agriculturist and 

 a farmer; the agriculturist is the man who made his money in town 

 and spends it in the country, while the farmer is the man who makes 

 his money in the country, and spends it in town. From my own ex- 

 perience, I had decided to do some experimenting, and secure a 

 young man Avho had some college training, and eight or ten years' 

 practical experience, to take charge of my farm; and after talking 

 the matter over with these gentlemen, I decided to let my farm be 

 used for the purposes of training young men, so that after they had 

 the theoretical part, they could get two or three years' practical 

 experience on the farm, under proper guidance, and, then, when 

 they were competent to take positions of trust, positions would be 

 found for them. It was simply trying to do systematically what we 

 had been doing unsystematically. I suggested to these men tha. 

 if they would allow their farms to be used for this training, they 

 would receive benefits, as well as the students, because it was so 

 hard to get reliable laborers for their farms. Ten farm owners, 

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