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attendance there were at least 99 at home. Had the seliools been difniissed for the 

 day, as they were in Marion County, and tlie 100 teachers from the county, accom- 

 panied by their older pupils, attended this meeting, scarce a farmer in the county 

 but would have heard something of the institute, the experiment station, and the 

 agricultural college. Moreover, every ambitious teacher present would have carried 

 sometliing of value back to her school and to her pupils, and the dissemination pivid- 

 uct would at least have been multiplied by ten. 



The common schools are one of the educational agencies that we can ill afford to 

 neglect. It is tlirough these that we may most quitkly and effectively lay mains to 

 the great reservoir of agricultural knowledge, of which Professor Hamilton has some- 

 times spoken. It is through such effort as this that we may promote the cause of 

 education for useful activity. It is well to help the graybeards; it is necessary to help 

 the children, too. About the best thing, almost the only thing, the institute can do 

 for the farmers of to-day is to get them on the right side in this educational discission. 

 For the sake of the next generation, more even than foi- their own sake, their 

 approval of the experiment station, the college of agriculture, and the teaching of 

 agriculture in the common sciiools is necessary. 



In a few instances we are met with the assertion that such procedure is narrow- 

 ing in its effects. There are yet a few who oppose what they term "early speciali- 

 zation" in the educative process. They plead for what they are plea.'^ed to call "a 

 liberal education" as a foundation for the economic and special education; but what 

 is a liberal education? I answer, it is the education that niukes a man free, that 

 emancipates him not only from the l)ondage of ignorance, but from the l)ondage of 

 dependence upon other i)eoiile for his bread and butter, from a parasiti<' livelihood; 

 that gives him the power to earn his own living — really earn it — by doing something 

 that needs to be done, and thereby contribute something to the general uplift of the 

 race. 



What is a liberal education? Let the head of Columbia University tell you what 

 it is not. He says: "The designation 'liberal' has come to be claimed as the sole 

 prerogative of a very narrow and technical course of study that was invented for a 

 very narrow and technical purpose and that has been very imperfectly liberalized in 

 the intervening centuries." 



That education is the best, the most liberal in the best sense of the term, for your 

 boy or for mine, tliat will make him worth the most to the world, able to contribute 

 in the largest possible degree (for him ) to human well-being. 



It is as certain as the law of gravitation that he who has the most to give, and 

 gives it, gets the most out of life. It is through one's vocation that he makes the 

 greater part of his contribution to human good. Hence, the tiioughtsof boys should 

 be early turned toward some honorable occupation. "Blessed is the boy," says 

 Jenkin Lloyd Jones, "who comes early to a life purpose, who knows what he wants 

 to do." 



The superintendent of the Boston schools has recently said that one purpose of 

 manual training in the schools is to help the boy to be fortunate in the choice of his 

 occupation. This is one purpose of agriculture in the public schools. It is best that 

 nearly one-half of the boys in the schools, probably more than half of those in the 

 rural schools, should select agriculture as a life vocation, and having selected it, 

 should be given the widest possible opportunity to fit themselves for this honorable 

 employment. 



The farmers' institute, by seeking the cooperation of teachers and school officers, 

 can become an important factor in giving character to the new education, the aim of 

 which is not "culture for culture's sake," not "art for art's sake," not philosophic 

 leisure, but success through useful activity, through large contribution to human 

 needs, through personal effort in doing a share of the world's work. "Let him who 

 would be greatest among you be your servant." "Happiness through work," says 

 Baker, "is the new creed of the dawning century." 



G. A. Putnam, of Ontario, Canada, presented the following paper on the same 

 subject: 



The previous speaker has dealt with this subject in a very broad and scholarly 

 manner, and what few remarks I have to offer will be of a practical nature, indicat- 

 ing what we are doing to keep our agricultural educational forces in close touch with 

 each other. The relation of the institutes to the press and the schools will be dealt 

 with in other papers and in discussion. 



Cooperation itself is one of the most important questions, not only in its relation to 

 agriculture but to the great manufacturing and producing establishments of the United 

 States and Canada. It is cooperation that has done so much for the agriculture of 

 Denmark and some of the other European and Australasian countries, and it occurs 



19983— No. 165—06 5 



