258 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



What the South Raises. 



Such is the machinery of southern agriculture; what does that 

 machinery do ? In the first place, it produces crops to the annual value 

 of more than a billion and a third dollars, constituting 28.7 per cent. 

 of the agricultural output of the country. Two staples, cotton and 

 corn, embrace 651/^ per cent, of all the crop values of the south, and 

 only seven of her crops can be called in any sense leading, viz., in the 

 order of their value, cotton, corn, fruits and vegetables, hay and forage, 

 wheat, sugar-yielding canes and rice. These comprise 91% per cent. 

 of all her crop values. Corn has come to occupy a greater acreage than 

 any other crop, having 25,612,949 acres as against 23,518,433 for 

 cotton, which leads us to hope that King Cotton's disastrous tyranny 

 has been tempered to the milder sway of a limited monarch. 



Agricultural Education. 



The three cardinal needs of the southern farmer to-day are educa- 

 tion, diversification and credit. 



The fundamental failing of the education offered the southern 

 farmer is that it is not adapted to the end in view. The curricula, 

 past and present, of our schools hardly bear the evidence of being 

 framed for a people whose prosperity depends so largely upon master- 

 ing the art and science of the tilling of the soil. The country schools 

 should teach branches bearing upon agriculture, beginning with 'na- 

 ture study' with the little tots, and extending to physics, chemistry 

 and botany for the mature pupils. Not only should the boy learn of 

 the lovely lea, over which the lowing herd so slowly winds, but he 

 should have an even more intimate acquaintance with the composition 

 of the soil and of the physiology of those cattle. The present system of 

 educating country children fits them for the spheres they are to fill 

 little further than by such unfolding of the intellect as necessarily 

 results from any schooling, but rather presents the anomaly of rearing 

 a great people to unfitness for its life work. The curriculum of rural 

 schools should be such that farmers would feel that they could not 

 afford to allow their children to miss its benefits. 



Many southern agricultural colleges meet the need little better 

 and fail signally to send men back to the farm. In this respect a num- 

 ber of schools in the northwest excel ours. The agricultural college of 

 Michigan has sent a larger per cent, of its graduates into farming 

 than professional schools and universities send of their graduates into 

 the professions for which they were prepared. The only plan of 

 agricultural education which has succeeded in any state in its object 

 is to have the institution devoted exclusively to preparing the farmer 

 for his peculiar life work, and at very low expense. 'Agricultural' 

 colleges which give extensive courses in non-agricultural branches are 



