No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 247 



His influence extends into the legislation that is to control the 

 country, and when this occurs he is unaffected by the temptations 

 of public life that cause many city men to fall. The necessity for 

 money with which to live, and the inordinate desire for holding office 

 as a means of living, do not control his vote. He can live without 

 the office. He regards public service as a duty which he assumes 

 as any other, and relinquishes as soon as the need for his service 

 is past. 



RURAL POPULATION, SAFEGUARD FOR THE STATE. 



In all history there is no record of the country population causing 

 the destruction of the nation through the practice of the vices that 

 enervate mankind, or the crimes that render life and property inse- 

 cure. States have always been destroyed by their cities. These 

 gradually absorb the country, and being compact, and having no 

 interests excepting those of self, they grow narrow in thought, low 

 in ideals, and corrupt in administration, until like Sodom and Go- 

 morrah, their sin becomes unbearable, and they are destroyed in 

 much the same way as those corrupt cities of the Plain, by a destruc- 

 tion overwhelming and complete. Babylon, Jerusalem, Nineveh, 

 Carthage, Rome, Athens, Tyre, Memphis, Ephesus, Troy and Corinth, 

 one fate befell them all, and the causes of their overthrow were 

 alike — a city population, with a country given over to a peasantry 

 too ignorant to govern, and too indifferent to care. Should this 

 country be guilty of like disregard of the interests of her rural 

 population, a like end will unquestionably result. 



The remedy for all of the ills which befell the ancient countries 

 and caused their final overthrow, lies in the proper education of 

 the rural people. Make the country habitable, by making agricul- 

 ture a profitable and interesting occupation, so that those who love 

 their family in preference to the club, will continue in sufficient 

 number to shape our religious life, and control the political future 

 of the State. 



An industry with 26,000,000 of people in its employ, and of this 

 almost 19,000,000, or 72 per cent., out of school and having practi- 

 cally no organized system of instruction in the mysteries of their 

 art, has been the situation until within the past twenty years. The 

 Institute school has come to carry to this vast body of our workers, 

 and to others who ought to join their ranks, the knowledge that 

 science has discovered relating to their calling, and the practice that 

 experience has shown to be the most valuable for their use. 



Into this vast field of agricultural education the Institute worker 

 has entered with his limited supply of help in the hope that as time 

 goes op. more laborers, and better equipped, may be found to assist 



