No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 589 



tests his own powers and interests with the natural, industrial, and 

 home-making objects and subjects will enable him earlier to find 

 himself; so that fewer mistakes in choice of a life vocation may be 

 made. 



When our city secondary schools freely offer to all pupils train- 

 ing in the mechanical industries and in home economics, teachers 

 will be trained ^^ho know the educational value of these subjects 

 from the standpoints of scholarship, mental power, industrial skill 

 and broad, i)ractical citizenship, and who can successfully introduce 

 these subjects in an elementary way in the higher grades of all our 

 city and town primary schools. Clearly there is need in the curri- 

 culum and plan of our city high schools for instruction in practical 

 subjects that those who are to be teachers of our lower schools 

 may have knowledge, interest and inspiration regarding these broad 

 lields of industrial and household work with which most of the peo- 

 ple throughout their lives must daily deal, and that very many lead- 

 ers with higher standards of skill and efficiency may be provided for 

 all our industrial and home-making work. Laborers trained in their 

 work, however simple; artisans skilled in their expert labor; tech- 

 nicians schooled and specialized in their duties; foremen, managers, 

 and heads of manufacturing, transportation, and commercial enter- 

 prises more alert to see the inter-relation of industrial processes — the 

 web and woof of our great non-agricultural industries — will make 

 splendid use of a far more highly developed practical school training 

 than our country now provides them. 



Oountry-life education has not had the advantage of centralized 

 population and wealth. It has not developed the needed leaders. 

 Its problems have been more difficult; its organization has been more 

 slow. While the State colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts 

 were designed by Congress to keep agriculture, and our splendid 

 country life at the front, some of these institutions failed for a quar- 

 ter of a century and more to make a success of their agricultural in- 

 struction. Many causes operated to retard the successful develop- 

 ment of collegiate courses in agriculture. General education requir- 

 ing only class rooms, chairs, blackboards and books and scientific 

 education requiring in addition only laboratories became first in- 

 stalled in many of the institutions and long held the chief place in 

 the minds of college presidents and boards of trustees. Entering 

 vigorously upon agricultural education necessitated the additional 

 expenditures for practice laboratories and practical work on the 

 farm, and for expensive herds of live stock and for other costly equip- 

 ment. The collegiate faculty, most of whom were educated in the 

 older schools, could not resist the temptation to enter a race for 

 large numbers of students with general colleges thus hoping to gain 

 favor with legislatures, and most of the funds were used for demands 

 which could easiest be made jjopular. Following the ideals of the 

 older educators, the technical and practical studies in agriculture 

 were at first put toward the top of the collegiate courses. The as- 

 sumption now proved erroneous that the farmer should be afforded 

 as long a course of college study as persons preparing for technical 

 professions. At first there Avere not so many positions open to the 

 trained agriculturist as to the graduate of the general and scientific 

 courses, which became popular as preparatory college course for 



