Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 145 



developed to that point that he could think in the abstract, think out 

 in the future and grasp ideas, it seems that the education swung to 

 the opposite extreme, from the intensely manual principle to the 

 ultimate limit of impracticability, best illustrated by the ancient 

 Chinese system. When the Chinese boy reached the age of five 

 years he was set to commit to memory a great mass of the teach- 

 ings of the ancient Confucius and learn it in the ancient Chinese 

 language, which he did not understand. Only about three in a 

 thousand of the boys were mentally and physically strong enough 

 to stand the strain. While they have been building up and the 

 government systematically encouraging that sort of education the 

 people have been left to work out their own system of agriculture 

 and mechanics. Great famines are not infrequent in China. 



We find, again, that Egypt, one of the first countries to de- 

 velop civilized conditions, has not devoted much time or attention 

 to agriculture. They were philosophers and lawmakers, but while 

 those capable friends of the country were devoting their attention 

 to philosophy and to law the peasant farmers were left to their 

 own devices, and we find that they are still plowing with a crooked 

 stick, harvesting and threshing by hand. If it had not been for 

 the great fertility brought in by the Nile, starvation would have 

 followed. They produced something of value, but did not train 

 their people to produce more stuff per man, with the result that at 

 present more than two-thirds of the total population has to spend 

 its energies in production of food and clothing. The country is now 

 controlled by England. 



India furnishes another striking example of the same thing. 

 It is one of the earliest countries to have civilization, yet they have 

 not been progressive, they have not gone forward and they hold a 

 very low position among the countries. They are also controlled 

 by the English. We have been told that the Hindoo mind is in- 

 capable of imagination, and lacking imagination they cannot see in 

 their mind anything they have not seen with their eyes. This is not 

 entirely correct. Look at the beautifully carved temples of that 

 country, elaborate in their architecture, and we will have to admit 

 that the mind which could conceive such buildings, and execute 

 them, is a creative mind. While those men who were capable of 

 constructive achievement, were devoting their time to temple build- 

 ing, to the expenditure of wealth, the farmers as a whole were 

 spending their time in plodding in a most miserable way. 



It may sound unkind, but it can be borne out, that agricultural 



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