84 Missouri Agricultiu^al Report. 



continue to furnish the successful men of the city, ought not the coun- 

 try boys to be educated as well as the city boys ? 



Again, if those boys are going to stay on the farm and carry on the 

 business of the countrj^ ought they not to be educated? Agriculture in 

 the future is going to mean more than it has meant in the past. Ought 

 there not to be a new education for the new agriculture? It is coming. 



Those boys on the farm have problems before them which are both 

 large and numerous. The boys who go to the city have municipal 

 problems to solve, and I believe the great city problems are going to be 

 solved honestly and justly by the farmer boys who go to the city. They 

 wall have to be solved, or the government goes down. 



Another thing: We want the business of the country rightly car- 

 ried on. We want better farmers, better crops, a better agriculture, 

 better men and better women in our country districts. If it be true 

 that there are problems on the farm to be solved, is it not necessary that 

 the country boys should be educated and trained, that their powers and 

 qualifications should be developed so that they will be able to cope 

 with the problems? We are coming into the new idea of farming and 

 leaving the old. The idea was to take up virgin land and rob it. That's 

 the way they are doing in the Dakotas today, and in Montana. Men 

 from the east and from the west are taking up the land and robbing it. 

 The new idea is to keep up the land fertility while gathering the crops 

 and making the crops grow better and better. That is one of the 

 problems. I believe that in all our State colleges w^e should take up 

 and try to give instruction along the lines of farm management, and 

 the selling of the farm stock. I hope that our students in the agri- 

 cultural colleges will soon learn the value of organization. There is 

 wonderful power in co-operation. The boy must learn that lesson in 

 order to sell the steers and the horses and the apples and the wheat and 

 the corn to the best advantage. 



There are other problems besides the actual farm problems — 

 problems of the rural comnnmities. When the farmer's boy finds life 

 on the farm rather uninteresting, is it any wonder that he likes to go 

 into town and to the saloon where things are bright and where the men 

 are joking and seem to be happy; and is it any wonder that he takes 

 the next step and the next, until he has learned things that he ought 

 not to know? There is this problem, then, in the rural community — 

 how to keep the children interested on the farm, how to hold them in 

 the rural community and make life happy for them. It can be done. 

 In Iowa the Y. M. C. A. is taking up work for coimtry boys and girls, 

 and forming clubs in different sections of that state. They hold classes 

 in different subjects, and the youths can take up any line of work they 



