AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 469 



of every new day because it added to the contentment of living. The 

 farmer and several sons managed a farm of eighty acres, twenty of which 

 were still in forest, and in haying time and harvest they hired three or 

 four hands and worked at the job, off and on, for a month. They raised 

 a few acres of corn, and wheat and oats and potatoes, with three or four 

 native cows, and a hundred weight of maple sugar. The grain and pigs 

 were sold in the neighboring hamlets or carried to the boats which plied 

 between the villages and the Erie canal. Once a week — and oftener in 

 circus time — the family drove Dobbin and Topsy to town in front of the 

 lumber wagon, and traded the butter and eggs for the few necessities 

 which the farm did not produce. The boys went to the red school house 

 three months in the winter to thrash the teacher, and incidentally to 

 master the rule of three, and to make another effort to get as far as 

 syntax. Happy days! The world was bounded by the misty horizon 

 cf the lake and by the distant hills! 



A railroad invaded the community. A steam engine took the place of 

 the water wheel, and behold! the horizon opened and the world appeared! 

 The mighty forces of a rising industrial empire rushed in, and every 

 social and environmental condition was upset. The boats were taken 

 off the lake, the wharves fell to decay, boots and shoes were sold in 

 pasteboard boxes, the minister had a new theology, the wheat and the 

 pigs of the West went by the doors to the city, and the boys caught the 

 unrest of the time, followed close behind. The invasion of a new economic 

 condition over ran the country, and the farming community, conserva- 

 tive and slow of apprehension from its long inactivitj^ was engulfed; 

 and the full readjustment has not yet come. 



The mainspring of this new movement was mechanical invention. The 

 manifold applications of the steam engine, the building of railroads, the 

 evolution of manufacture, carried new ideas and new methods to every 

 man. The shoemaker no longer made shoes, the tailor no longer made 

 clothes. The scythe and sickle were hung on the fence and the mowing 

 machine and the reaper took their places. Transportation and manufac- 

 ture brought people together. Everyone was attracted by the new life. 

 The cities grew. They gathered to themselves all the quickening and 

 nervous energy of the time. Thither the farm boys and the farm girls 

 flocked. I do not blame them, for I went, too! 



I do not blame the butterfly if its seeks the flower, nor the moth if 

 it flies to the candle, ndr the bird if it revels in the color and perfume 

 of the tangle, nor the brook if it tumbles pell mell into the sea. All 

 things must find their level, and all must live where life is best and 

 where struggle for existence is least. 



The farm no longer needed so many boys, for two men can do the 

 haying in a week and ride to town on a bicycle after supper. But the 

 seri( us part of it is, for agriculture, that the brightest ami most ambiMous 

 boys went to town. They were the ones who were anxious to learn. In 

 fact, they must learn, for business was new. The intellectual awakening 

 was itself a reward. Schools of mechanics arose and soon were crowded, 

 fed by the ninety per cent, of the boys who had left the farm. The ten 

 per cent., or thereabouts, who remained on the farm, could not fill many 

 agricultural colleges and there was little instruction which, in novelty 

 and immediate practicability, could compete with the otliei". The i-lse 

 of the school of mechanics was the legitimate fruit of the time. 



