CONVENTION OF COLLEGES AND EXPERIMENT STATIONS.- 13 



fields, orchards, or other farm units, etc., these to be directly under the charge 

 of the experiment stations. 



Branch stations were considered undesirable, because such stations are un- 

 necessary for purely geographical reasons, and they would either duplicate the 

 principal station or become merely a demonstration farm. " In either case they 

 would weaken research, not strengthen it. Large funds are needed for impor- 

 tant research, and all experience shows that the funds should be concentrated 

 as much as possible." 



The separate agricultural school was held to be undesirable, for reasons which 

 the spealver has already presented. 



In discussing the same question of policy, Dr. W. E. Stone advocated the fur- 

 ther support of the extension worli in order to develop and strengthen it, but he 

 did not advocate Federal support of secondary education in a broad, and uniform 

 system. 



" It is my conviction," he said. " that public-school questions should be left to 

 the respective States, and if so left we shall arrive at the practical and success- 

 ful solutions of the industrial-education question far sooner through the efforts 

 of many earnest seeliers after the right methods, rather than by foisting a 

 uniform and costly system upon all States alike." 



He sympathized with the feeling that the original purpose in the Federal 

 grants for colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts has been accomplished, that 

 the agricultural movement has been given birth and nourishment, and has 

 reached a stage where the several States should now sustain it. 



Dean Thomas F. Hunt made a strong plea for vocational training, urging that 

 if the Nation is to hold its intellectual and industrial place among the nations 

 of the world such a training must be provided for boys and girls between the 

 ages of 14 and citizenship. The value of a national measure would lie not so 

 much in the money which it would appropriate as in the general educational 

 policy which it would inaugurate. 



" The first requisite to the development of local agricultural or industrial 

 conditions is to have an educated man in each community charged with the 

 responsibility of devoting at least a portion of his time to the problems to be 

 solved." This would be supplied by a system of agricultural high schools. The 

 speaker favored a measure which would provide in a broad way for the needs 

 of the country in the direction of secondai-y agricultural education, the training 

 of agricultural teachers, and the maintenance of branch experiment stations. 



Assistant Secretary "W. M. Hays maintained that " the great waste in counti-y 

 life is through ignorance," and that the big problem in eliminating this is the 

 bringing of the body of knowledge now available into form and taking it to 

 the people, young and old, who need it. He plead for an educational system to 

 include not only the traditional subjects, but the vocational as well. He 

 emphasized the importance of this in developing farm managers and leaders 

 and in building up a more efficient body of farmers and a broader farm life. 

 An essential feature of this movement is the development of agricultural 

 teachers through the normal schools. 



The present scope of this movement was explained, and the point was made 

 that the work is broad enough for all the various agencies. 



Commissioner P. P. Claxton spoke in support of aid to secondary education. 

 He urged that this is a national question, comparing it in this respect to the 

 conservation enterprises which know no State boundaries. He reviewed the 

 terms of a bill suggested at a recent meeting of the National Society for the 

 Promotion of Industrial Education, which aims to provide for secondary 

 agricultural education in various forms. 



