80 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



I would like to take you with me for a little trip to show you how 

 the Oriental people are taught agriculture. If you will go with me 

 back a few years, and across the turbulent waves of the Pacific Ocean 

 over to Japan, I will take you to a field where I had forty Japanese 

 students in farming. They were taught in the lecture room and then 

 in the field. I would take them out to the field plots twice a week, 

 and they thought they were carrying on experiments which were on a 

 par with some of the best German experiments. After they had been 

 taught the plan of cultivation they would go and study up some of the 

 wonderful German experiments and would get the idea that there was 

 something to be investigated, or they would want to try some new kind 

 of vegetables. They would make their plans and submit them to me, 

 and I would correct them or change them if I thought necessary, and 

 the finished plan would be adopted by each student. Each would choose 

 his part of the field, or have it chosen for him. I purchased from 

 America a set of garden tools for each student. We would go out into 

 the field with those tools and while they did not really learn much that 

 was experimental they did learn how to use the hoe and rake and spade. 

 They were sons of officials who looked down on manual labor, and they 

 had no idea of going into farming — they were going to become officers 

 or teachers. Nevertheless, some of them did become farmers, and some 

 of them are today living on farms with their families. They have 

 sent me photographs of some of their gardens showing that they have 

 taken up the business of agriculture and are doing well. So I have 

 the proof in my own experience that you can teach the yellow-skinned 

 race agriculture by getting out into the field with them and "show- 

 ing them." They can learn it by working with their hands and think- 

 ing with their heads. Some of these students became so interested that 

 they would go out and work on Sunday; and when I rebul^ed them 

 they could not understand why I should do so when it was all so in- 

 teresting and valuable to them and would be so valuable to the world. 

 Dr. Knapp told you last evening about some of his experiences in the 

 South, and how in some degree the difficulty with the negro has been 

 solved by manual training and industrial schools; how the Hampton 

 and Tuskegee institutes have solved the problems of saving the negroes 

 from idleness and crime and made useful citizens out of them. I 

 want to add ray testimony to what he said. Three years ago I pur- 

 chased a farm in Maryland and secured a colored man for a helper. 

 I want to tell you that he is honest, straightfonvard, faithful, and 

 true. I have left the farm in his charge for months at a time and have 

 never found him imfaithful. AVhy? Because back in the olden time, 

 fifty years ago, when he was a boy he was trained in a southern home 



