89 



intelligent, sympathetic guidance towards ultimate happiness and 

 the common weal. Does happiness, then, exist on the sug'ar plan- 

 tations of Hawaii ? Not necessarily nor solely. Neither is it dis- 

 tinctively urban. There are, however, g^reater possibilities of its 

 attainment by the large majority in the field than in the office or 

 the workshop, for the very simple reason that, generally speaking, 

 life is more natural in the field than elsewhere. Yet for several 

 generations the drift of population has been citywards. 



Figures to Prove. 



I quote from figures compiled by Air. William H. Rossit. The 

 population of the world increased from approximately one billion 

 in 1800 to about one billion and a half in 1900. In France, in 

 that hundred years, a group of specified cities increased in popu- 

 lation four hundred per cent, while the rest of the nation, exclu- 

 sive of these cities, increased little more than 20 per cent. In 

 England the population of the cities in 1801 was 25 per cent, of 

 the whole, while in 1900 it was more than 50 per cent, of the 

 whole. In the United States the population in the cities increased 

 100 times during the century while the remainder of the country 

 increased only eleven times. 



These figures are of great significance. I am not certain that 

 the cause underlying this drift citywards is so much desire for 

 urban residence through the belief that it is more advantageous, 

 as it is the failure of the country to meet the needs of its popula- 

 tion. Another significant fact has been revealed by statistical re- 

 search. A large percentage of urban residents are tempera- 

 mentallv unfit for city life. Education is not responsible for this 

 unfitness, although we hear much in these days of the tendency 

 of modern systems to educate the people away from the soil. 

 The agriculturist has not altogether fulfilled his obligations. Ele 

 has not helped enough to open up the larger view. 



This larger view need not include the ability to properly scan a 

 line of Homer, nor to correctly render kai gar when it appears in 

 the text, although that ability need not in itself prevent a tilling 

 of the soil. It does include, however, the right of the individual 

 to have offered him the kind of education which will stimulate his 

 imagination, train his hand and eye, increase his self-respect and 

 enhance the market value of his labor. 



Affhe Bottom. 



Right here is one of the fundamentals of the proposal before 

 us. It is not altogether the negative purpose of giving an agri- 

 cultural training to only such youths as fail to come up to certain 

 specified requirements in the curricuhmi. It includes the positive 

 purpose of shaning natural tendencies toward agriculture, of en- 

 gendering a belief in the dignity of labor in general and of til'- 



