No. 7. DEPARTMENT OP AQRICULTURE. 587 



000,000 school children of the country. All Avill agree that inquir- 

 ies should be made concerning the best way to supplement these 

 colleges, so as to carry this education down through all the schools, 

 so as to carry instruction and inspiration into all three practical 

 lines of effort to all our youth. As an outgrowth of the engineer- 

 ing departments of these State colleges, instruction in the mechanic 

 arts has been very successfully introduced into the numerous city 

 high schools of the country. Evidence of the utility of the mechan- 

 ic arts' city high school is arising from the effect they are having 

 on the mechanical industries. Manufacturing firms, for example, 

 are seeking in these schools the young men and young wome'n who 

 show an aptitude for expert work, a genius for invention and new 

 construction, an instinct for managing men, or abilities for pro- 

 moting and conserving financial affairs. As a result of agricultural 

 work of State colleges more than thirty of the needed two or three 

 hundred agricultural high schools have been organized by the dif- 

 ferent states, two having established one such school in each Con- 

 gressional district. Home economics education, first organized in 

 agricultural colleges is rapidh' spreading into all city high schools, 

 agricultural high schools as well as privately endowed schools of 

 secondary and higher grade and even into primary schools. In 

 towns and cities too small to establish separate mechanic arts' 

 schools, more or less mechanical and home economics' instruction is 

 introduced often as elective subjects in the regular high school 

 courses of instruction. 



The little rural school, so long the most backward in catching 

 step with modern progress, is beginning to take new form. Educa- 

 tion in agriculture and home economics once it is fairly started to- 

 ward all farm boys and girls promises to be too strong for the con- 

 servatism of even the isolated rural school. These schools have 

 amply demonstrated that in their present form they can not prop- 

 erly handle these new lines of work. It has been shown that they 

 need to be born over into new life which will fit them for their part 

 ^a most important part in the evolution of modern agriculture and 

 modern home-making. The one-room school must become the four- 

 room consolidated school, so that a man trained to teach agricul- 

 ture and a woman trained to teach home economics may here find 

 that fair wages, and that long tenure of ofQce which will warrant 

 them in thoroughly preparing for their important tasks. The fac- 

 ulty of four or five teachers can conduct a ten-year course extending 

 through the eight primary school years and two years of the high 

 school for the 1.50 children from as many farms in an area of 25 

 square miles. The cottage of the principal; the plantations of tim- 

 ber, fruit, vegetable and ornamental plants; the plots for field crops, 

 fertilizer demonstrations and farm management lessons; the labora- 

 tory and practice room; and the vital connection the teachers can 

 have by co-operating with parents in the work on the farms and 

 in the homes will weave strongly into the pupils' nature the ele- 

 ments of a true education in country life. With the schools thus 

 organized there is provided in the country a far broader child-life 

 than has yet been conceived for city youth. How can the nation 

 better expend some of its wealth than by thus making provision 

 for well-nigh ideal conditions of fatherhood and motherhood in our 



