60 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



ling horses, milking, using an ax, a hoe and the like, should be made an 

 entrance requirement, just as with reading, spelling, etc. 



Such, as I conceive it, is a proper agricultural course of four years for 

 the bright lad from the district school that wants to go back on the farm 

 — character-training, brain-culture, hand-culture. 



DO THEY FARM 1 



Just at this point comes the objector, and declares this process does 

 not make farmers. The easiest and most seductive thing in the world is 

 destructive criticism. It is so easy and soothing to one's esti- 

 mate of one's own importance to put on a superior air and 

 with sarcasm and invective declare that "Agricultural colleges 

 are at present almost invariably run wrong, almost invariably 

 diverted from their lawful purpose." It is only fair and just to presume 

 that the man who makes such a statement knows a right waj of 

 running an agricultural college different from the actual method pur- 

 sued. Yet I defy any man to point to any helpful suggestions of a con- 

 structive nature regarding agricultural courses in all the mass of pas- 

 sionate condemnation that has appeared in our newspapers. If the 

 methods I have described constitute educating men away from the farm, 

 then it means that the farmer does not need and must not have a full, 

 logical, rational preparation for his life's work. It means that the better 

 prepared a man is through study of basal principles of soil fertility and 

 tillage, and the wider the inductions he is able to make from given data 

 concerning plant diseases, the less likely he is to go to farming. Com- 

 pare this statement with a similar one about the study of medicine. The 

 more a man knows about the constitution of the human body the closer 

 and more minute his knowledge of diseases and their symptoms, the less 

 apt he is to become a physician. Everyone knows that the last state- 

 ment is grotesquely untrue. Other things being equal the more thor- 

 ough and extended the research into the basal sciences of medicine the 

 better the physician. Now why, necessary changes in the statement 

 being made, is this not true of agriculture? The sad truth in the matter 

 is that our boys do not come to us as the medical student goes to his col- 

 lege. Our boys do not want to be farmers when they come to us. The 

 condition of agriculture is such, the tone of conversation at home is so 

 gloomy, that the boy imbibes no love for his future occupation. He 

 becomes accustomed to looking around for a brighter horizon before he 

 ever leaves the paternal roof. 



SOME FIGURES. 



When our boys enter, we ask them what they intend to become. The 

 answers show that 50^ are uncertain ; 24^^ expect to become mechanical 

 engineers, and only 11;^ have enough ambition for farm life to desire to 

 become farmers. Now put with this fact another, which any of you can 

 verify for himself by computation from our graduates' catalogue; the 

 effect of four years of education of the kind I have described is to more 

 than double this percentage. Twenty-four per cent actually have become 



