113 



Mr. Davenport. I may say that in the University of Illinois the college of 

 agriculture is not a technical college in the sense the engineering college is. 

 An engineering course is an absolutely set course, and has little or no time for 

 the language, literature, and other of the nontechnical subjects which are 

 requiretl for graduation in the agricultural course. The demand for engineering 

 students is so large, the public calls for so nuich technical information at once 

 upon graduation, that they are compelled to devote practically all the time of 

 the college course to .strictly technical training. 



Mr. Henry. Assuming it is right to train an engineer that way. I think the 

 same is true of agriculture. The engineering course has been longer in develop- 

 ing and has had more highly trained men than agriculture. 



The Chairman. It is not necessary to success in agriculture that a man should 

 have the same training that is required in engineering. You all know very well 

 that there are hundreds of farmers making a good living and making money wlio 

 have had no technical training in school at all. and there are going to be such 

 men for a good many years to come. That is, the conditions are such in agri- 

 culture in this country that an uneducated farmer can actiuire land, make 

 money, and succeed at farming. That can not be done in engineering. Neither 

 is it profitable to give him training in engineering of the brief superficial kind 

 which you can give men in these technical courses of agriculture. You can not 

 accomplish successful engineering training without a good many years of mathe- 

 matics. Mathematics is not required to get a degree in agriculture. So that I 

 should say that a professional course of study in engineering involves a good 

 deal of well-defined and clear-cut training, but that the course in agriculture is 

 not yet on the basis of the professional course, although it is technical. I make 

 That distinction. The trend of the discussion seems to be that it is not neces- 

 sary to put the same amount of training into the engineer that it was into the 

 agriculturist, in order that he may meet the demands of the day. but I do not 

 agree with that, because the farmer can meet the demands of the day and not 

 have a bit of training, and there are hundreds and thousands of farmers doing 

 that every day ; but there are not many successful engineers who have not had 

 a pretty thorough training. 



Deans Henry and Davenport dissented from the position that untrained 

 farmers are succeeding in any proper sense or complying with the condition of 

 good agricultural practice, that they shall occupy the land and leave it as good 

 as they found it. 



Mr. Henry. The San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys have been practically 

 ruined in the last thirty or forty years. The State of New York has areas in it 

 that have been robbed of their fertility by improvident culture. In Europe I 

 have traveled over lands that were probably cultivated in the time of Julius 

 Caesar, and I saw wheat there yielding as high as GO bushels to the acre. In 

 America we have skimmed over the land and taken the best of its fertility. 

 People buy land and when they ruin it, or get it up to a certain price, they go to 

 another place. This is due both to lack of technical training, and to the business 

 idea of getting the money out of the land and leaving it. 



It will be found, I think, that the unschooled men who are making a success 

 of farming are nevertheless self-educated men, and in a way are as well edu- 

 cated as the engineer is. 



Mr. Davenport. The engineer has got to meet the demand of the trade. The 

 farmer also has to meet the demand of the trade, and in addition he has to mei!t 

 a certain demand of the State. This generation of farmers must not be per- 

 mitted to occupy to the disadvantage of the oncoming generation. There is a 

 broader demand on the farmer than rests upon the engineer. 



