446 



ORGANIZATION IS NECESSARY. 



Several factors must cooperate in the improvement of the farm- 

 er's condition. He must have the chance to be educated in the 

 widest possible sense — in the sense which keeps ever in view the 

 intimate relationship between the theory of education and the facts 

 of life. In all education we should widen our aims. It is a good 

 thing to produce a certain number of trained scholars and 

 students ; but. the education superintended by the State must seek 

 rather to produce a hundred good citizens than merely one scholar, 

 and it must be turned now and then from the class book to the 

 studv of the great book of nature itself. This is especially true of 

 the farmer, as has been pointed out again and again by all observ- 

 ers most competent to pass practical judgment on the problems of 

 our country life. All students now realize that education must 

 seek to train the executive powers of young people and to confer 

 more real significance upon the phrase "dignity of labor," and to 

 prepare the pupils so that in addition to each developing in the 

 highest degree his individual capacity for work they may together 

 help create a right public opinion, and show in many ways social 

 and cooperative spirit. Organization has become necessary in 

 the business world, and it has accomplished much for good in the 

 world of labor. It is no less necessary for farmers. Such a move- 

 ment as the grange movement is good in itself and is capable of a 

 well-nigh infinite further extension for good, so long as it is kept to 

 its own legitimate busmess. The benefits to be derived by the 

 association of farmers for mutual advantage are partly economic 

 and partly sociological. 



THE GOVERNMENT CAN HELP. 



Moreover, while in the long run voluntary effort will prove 

 more efficacious than Government assistance, while the farmers 

 must primarily do most for themselves, yet the Government can 

 also do much. The Department of Agriculture has broken new 

 ground in many directions, and year by year it finds how it can 

 improve its methods and develop fresh usefulness. Its constant 

 effort is to give the governmental assistance in the most effective 

 way ; that is, through associations of farmers rather than to or 

 through individual farmers. It is also striving to coordinate its 

 work with the agricultural departments of the several States, and 

 so far as its own work is educational, to coordinate it with the 

 work of other educational authorities. Agricultural education is 

 necessarilv based upon general education, but our agricultural 

 educational institutions are wisely specializing themselves, making 

 their courses relate to the actual teaching of the agricultural and 

 kindred sciences to young country people or young city people who 

 wish to live in the countrv. 



