478 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE 



work of ten men and does it better; and when the boys are not needed 

 the girls are not needed either. There are too few scholars now to main- 

 tain the inspiration of the school, and w'e cannot afford the best of 

 teachers. In the towns the schools are growing better, and the district 

 school cannot compete. 



Shut up the old red school house! It is a milestone in our progress, 

 but niikstoues are dead. Shut up the old red school house! The hamlet 

 school is the rural school of the future, and it will be the guiding star 

 to our children's lives as the district school has been to ours. If the 

 country is wide, hire a man and team to gather in the children from 

 far and near. Bring them to the school: w^e cannot longer take the 

 school to them. Let us fall in with the movement of the time. We can- 

 not stop it if we would: we can make it serve us if we will. We must 

 not let our theories of what ought to be, obscure the importance of what 

 is. 



IV — THE KEMEDY. 



Ihere are ills now, as there always have been. Land often bears an 

 undue proportion of taxation, transportation rates are not always just, 

 immigration keeps our economic conditions in a ferment, the tariff is un- 

 stable and not always helpful, there are combines which speculate upon 

 farin produce, there is often great difficult}' in reaching the consumer, 

 the rural delivery of mails is not consummated, legislators play upon the 

 prejudices of the farmer, railroads often have been developed at expense 

 of highways; but the greatest ills are poor farming and poor farmers, 

 iiide aluug any railroad or highway and point out the farm which is 

 producing all that it might! How many farms are well farmed? One 

 in ten? I fancy not one in a hundred. 



How may a farmer farm better? High prices make shiftless farmers. 

 High prices opened the West before its time. High prices robbed the 

 land of its virgin strength and then run away. The crisis is now on, 

 and it will not lift of itself nor b,y legislation. The remedy is evolution. 

 Evolution is progress, and progress is possible onh' with education. The 

 diflficulties will vanish with the evolution of the farmer, by natural 

 means and by social and legislative forces which he will set at work. 

 They tell us that the farmer will be prosperous next year or in the coming 

 administiation, or under free trade or of protective tariff. Do not believe 

 it! The tariff" appeals lo the i)urse; education appeals to the man! Evolu- 

 tion must be from within outwards, or from below upwards. It is futile 

 to attempt any permanent evolution by working upon the evidences of 

 an agricultural decline. We build nothing by beginning on top, except 

 wells, and they are apt to bury us. It is the farmer which makes agri- 

 culture, and it is the farmer, therefore, with whom amelioration must 

 begin. 



The one salvation of agriculture, therefore, is education. By educa- 

 tion I mean education, not the dispensing of facts. The mental stature, 

 like the moral and the physical, is a creature of growth. We must give 

 the man broad and generous principles which make him a man, wiiether it 

 makes him a farmer or not. It is better for him to know how and why 

 a clod holds its moisture than to know whole systems of irrigation. It 

 is more jjrofitable for him to know why we till than to know all the 

 dates and methods and tools for all the crops. Give a man principles. 



