No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 653 



education is not all sunshine; there is considerable worrying as well 

 as to other occupations. Teach your children to work as well as 

 to study and a combination of* both will bring better results than 

 possessing only one. Then again, we find that a certain portion of 

 our country boys dislike farming, and if they have no education, 

 what are they going to do? Are they going to work in some coal 

 mine or pick away at some railroad track, although there is always 

 demand for such labor, you should always aim for something higher. 

 It is just as honorable to be a farmer as it is to be a lawyer as there 

 is generally more honesty connected with it. 



lint now why is it that so many of our young men make but small 

 advancement in their education, with our country schools in the 

 condition they are at present and the free tuition which now exists 

 in our normal schools, there is but small excuse for the greater por- 

 tion not taking advantage of these privileges. Why is it? Well, the 

 first thing we would notice, that about one-third of our boys are 

 smoking cigarettes or chewing tobacco, and a boy w T ho follows these 

 habits will prosper but little or prove worse than useless; but the 

 most important cause is his attendance at school; we find some 

 parents sending their children to school about three days in a week 

 or allowing them to get to school from fifteen minutes to half an 

 hour late and the consequences are that the boy grows up and 

 becomes 17 or 18 years old and is in classes with other pupils of 

 about 12 or 13. He becomes ashamed and quits school. This is the 

 class of boys that a great portion of our farmers are made of. 



One argument which is brought up against educated farmers is 

 that they can farm better on paper and tell Iioav things ought to be 

 done better than they can do them themselyes. There is a great deal 

 of truth in this but the educated farmer ought and should not be 

 any more afraid of work than the average farmer of this kind who 

 is continually hiring help and has no outside income besides his 

 farm, we generally find that he fails. Then we find that some 

 learned farmers want to put themselves above their brethren and 

 get in a hurry to acquire wealth and they go into other kinds of 

 business with their farming and the result is that they neglect 

 their agricultural pursuits, probably lose in their occupations and 

 the result is that they have nothing left. 



Our great thinkers tell us that it is coining to the time and age 

 of the world when all should acquire a fair education and that all 

 no matter how rich or how poor, if they earnestly try, can succeed 

 in acquiring a knowledge of the desired studies. Rut how much of 

 an education does a farmer need? We might say that a knowledge 

 of the common branches is all that is necessary, but we should get 

 all that we possibly can; a course in a high school or normal school, 

 and completed with a course in an agricultural school would be of 

 great benefit to the average farmer. 



Look at our Southern states where education is regarded as of 

 small importance, and see the strife anil corruption which now exists 

 there; or compare them with our Northern states in manufacture 

 and agriculture, and do we not find that these northeastern states 

 are far in the lead. Notice the great race wars which occur in Ken 

 tucky or the great crowds of sinners who assemble to execute some 

 negro criminal. Although he may deserve such punishment, yet 

 they cast a blot on this great and free country of ours. Look at 



