FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 113 



1. Few students enter the agricultural courses, and fewer return to 

 the farm after the completion of their studies. 



2. The college course educates a man away from the farm. 



3. The courses in agriculture are not sufficiently practical. 



First of all, then, it is an undisputed fact that comparatively few young 

 men do enter the full courses of agriculture that lead to a degree^ and 

 fewer that graduate adopt practical agriculture as the main life work. 

 This,being the case, it is important for us to know the reasons for such a 

 condition. Where shall we seek for an explanation — in the college, oi' 

 elsewhere? 



My conviction, born of observation and experience, is that in the main 



THESE COLLEGES CAN NOT JUSTLY BE BLAMED 



for the small proportion of students of agriculture who have entered 

 their doors. There are in this audience many persons who have been 

 teachers in the rural schools. Those of you who have had this experience 

 will agree to the statement, I am sure, that only a part and perhaps a 

 minority of farmers' boys could by any known means be induced to enter 

 upon a course of study worthy to appear in a college catalog as leading 

 to a degree. 



Many farmers' sons do, however, jiossess in a varying- measure the 

 desire and the ability to acquire knowledge beyond that supplied by the 

 common school. We speak of these young men as ambitious. But what 

 are their ambitions? They are, as a rule, just what we should expect 

 them to be. As these boys sit around the home fireside, many of them 

 listen to the exaltation of riches^, professional skill, official power, and 

 forensic or literary distinction as the highest attainments. The volumes 

 of the histories of men and of nations which they thumb tell them, not 

 of farmers, but of legislators, orators and poets. 



Now it does not appear, so far as I have been able to observe, that 

 the fathers and mothers on the farm are as a rule out of sympathy with 

 the course which their sons pursue in seeking distinction where distinc- 

 tion has always been found. The critic of agricultural colleges is prone 

 to assume that farmers and farmers' wives are anxious for their bright 

 boys to stay on the farm ; but I do not so interpret their pride in the career 

 of the merchant, physician, lawyer or clergyman, whose college education 

 was made possible through their hard work and persistent economy. 



I have found from a knowledge of individual cases that this defection 

 from the ranks of agriculture is regarded with the utmost complacency, 

 even satisfaction, not only in the homes most interested, but by the rural 

 communities that take great pride in the successful men they have sent 

 into the business or professional world. 



But, granting that a proportion of farmers' sons, who are fit material 

 for the developing and moulding influence of the college class room, are 

 disposed to adopt agriculture as their life work, there are still reasons 

 why many of these have not been inclined to attend the Agricultural 

 College, chief of wiiich has been an 



INAPPRECIATION OF THE A'ALUB OF SCIENCE 



in practical agriculture. Twenty-five years ago there was a general atti- 

 tude of skepticism towards the so-called scientific farming, or book farm- 



15 



