Live Stock Breeders' Association. 311 



These, more than the colleges, will prove to be the agencies by 

 which the masses of the people will get their training and their 

 trend. For this reason the future welfare of these schools is to 

 be specially safeguarded; but every subject and interest that is 

 taken away from the high school in the present stage of its de- 

 velopment lessens by that much its power to serve the community, 

 and by that much it is a menace to its life and efficiency and a check 

 if not a bar to its further development. 



7. Separate schools in agriculture will check the extension 

 of high schools into country communities. High schools started 

 first in the cities, it is true, but they are making their way rapidly 

 out into the country, a tendency that is to be encouraged, more es- 

 pecially as they are showing a remarkable disposition to respond 

 to their environment. If the interests are not divided, it is entirely 

 possible for any community, without going beyond driving limits, 

 to throw all its energies into a school of secondary grade and make 

 is capable of truly reflecting all its varied interests. This has been 

 found impossible where secondary education is primarily under 

 ecclesiastical influence; it will also be found impossible if interests 

 are to be divided and as many separate schools established as there 

 are interests to be served, but if they will stay together and solve 

 their problems as a unit, it is possible for every prosperous com- 

 munity to give its young people at their very doors what is to all 

 intents and purposes a college education. 



8. It is unnecessary to found separate schools in order that 

 agriculture shall be taught, and well taught. I am enough of a 

 partisan for agriculture to demand what is needed for its develop- 

 ment: to advocate, if necessary, separate schools for this purpose, 

 even if they should result in reducing the scope and curtailing for- 

 ever the full and possible development of the high school. But it 

 is unnecessary to resort to this expedient in these days. It was 

 necessary to do so in an early day, because of the indifferent, not 

 to say unfriendly attitude of the schools of the time, all of which 

 were organized and conducted on the classical basis in order to fit 

 for the so-called learned professions. Such schools had little knowl- 

 edge of and less sympathy for industrial education, and to get a 

 start at all it was inevitable that separate schools should be estab- 

 lished to do what existing schools would not in those days under- 

 take. 



But conditions are changed. We are living now in a new age — 

 in an age which recognizes that the highest purpose in education 



