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C. F. CuRTiss, of Iowa. I believe that in our agricultural work we are tending 

 strongly toward training the farmer the same as we do the engineer. We are 

 loading our courses of study up with more and more technical work every year. 

 We are going to be very soon on practically the same basis. It is true we have 

 not had that heretofore ; we wore not in position to get it ; we did not have the 

 technical men in our faculty. The conditions are getting to be such that the 

 j-oung farmer is going to be obliged more and more largely each year to sell his 

 services on the market, just as the young engineer does. I think less than 50 

 per cent of our agricultural students are In such circumstances that they can 

 return to farms of their own proprietorship, or likely to come to them by inher- 

 itance. There is going to be an increasing demand for the young men who have 

 had the thorough technical and pi-actical training which i-enders them capable 

 of taking charge of a farm, as an engineer takes charge of a plant, and making 

 it a profitable investment for the owner. The demand is more largely for thor- 

 ough training in agriculture. And I believe we are going to load up our courses 

 (and some of the institutions have already encountered the difficulty) so fully 

 with agriculture that there will not be room for mathematics, science, and the 

 culture studies. These studies are giving way and nuist give way more largely 

 in the future than they have in the past to technical agricultural studies. 



Mr. Bailey. To all requests for men to take charge of large agricultural 

 enteriirises I always reply that we can not send recent college graduates to fill 

 such positions. That is not the way the agricultural student is trained The 

 engineering enteri)rises are organized enterprises. The young man goes to do a 

 special piece of work under direction, wdiereas the agricultural student who 

 takes charge of a 250-acre orchard, for example, not only has to direct the 

 technical work of sprayins, etc., but he has to do with the management of 

 Eien and other executive details, and that demands experience. The engineer 

 who is the manager of men is the one Avho has been out of college two or three 

 years, and therefore has had experience in the management of men. 



I sometimes wonder, when we are splitting up our agricultural courses into 

 small units, whether we are not overloading them with very minute divisions 

 of subjects and are not likely to substitute training for education, mere tech- 

 nical, manual, and special skill for real mental powex-. 



So far as we have organized industries in agriculture, as we have in engineer- 

 ing, I think the educational demands :ire parallel to a large extent, and the 

 experience of the engineer is useful to us. So long as the larger part of the 

 subject of agriculture is unorganized, I do not see how we can adopt the kind 

 of training the engineer receives. I suppose, as time goes on, we shall find 

 increasing demand for particular and technical special lines of training for the 

 agricultiU'al man. 



J. L. Snyder, of :Michigan. The inference which could be drawn from the 

 remarks made might lead one to think that the engineering courses were almost 

 entirely technical and that our agricultural courses 'were at least half liberal 

 or included subjects that would give discipline. We all know that our engineer- 

 ing courses are exceedingly strong in mathematics, and \A'e also know that the 

 disciplinary value of mathematics is very great. In addition to that, engineer- 

 ing students must have a good knowledge of English. If they do not have it 

 when they enter the school, they must get it afterwards. Engineering gradu- 

 ates are well trained in English. They must also have considerable science 

 work. On the whole, our engineeriiig courses give very good disciplinary train- 

 ing. On the other hand, if we n)al;e our courses in agriculture thoroughly 

 technical, we lose the disciplinary ^alue that is attached to the courses of 

 engineering. If we divide up our courses in agriculture as finely as some have 

 recommended, I think that to a large extent the disciplinary value will be lost, 



