514 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



been well raised, and have the best principles of manhood and woman- 

 hood instilled in them. 



There are five hundred of those students young women. They 

 talked a year about doing away with those girl students, but the boys 

 objected. A wise man came down to Des Moines and spoke before 

 the legislature, and said he thought it was a good idea to have the 

 boys and girls educated together, and that he didn't take any stock in 

 the statement that boys and girls come together just for the sake of 

 finding their life companions. Furthermore, he thought it would be 

 well, anyway, for the state to give a little more attention to the subject 

 of matrimony, for if they did, the courts would have to give less atten- 

 tion to the subject of alimony. Those young women come there with 

 a firm resolve to be spinsters, and live all the rest of their lives teach- 

 ing the subjects of home economics and domestic science; but they 

 break away from those resolutions! It has been said that within nine 

 years about ninety per cent have given up the idea of teaching other 

 people's children, and have gone into homes of their own. 



Of the balance of the students, something near 2,000 — more than 

 half are in courses of agriculture; and by far the larger number of 

 girls are in the regular agricultural course. Remember that the great 

 majority of those boys in agriculture are going right into agriculture 

 after they leave college. It was not so a few years ago. In our special 

 collegiate course, in which there are something over 2 00 young men, 

 inquiry has shown that about 97 or 98 per cent are planning to go 

 right back on the farms; and in the case of the four-year course 76 

 or 77 per cent of those boys go back on the farms and the rest of them 

 become teachers or investigators on agricultural subjects. 



Why was it that some years ago the agricultural college at Ames, 

 and agricultural colleges in other states, were not educating more 

 young people along agricultural lines and sending them back to the 

 farms? You know many people think that condition still exists. 

 Twenty years ago there were very few young men studying agricul- 

 ture, and here is the reason, because twenty years ago there was very 

 little to teach them. In the second place, it didn't pay very much to 

 learn it. I was in a course of agriculture at that time; H. C Wallace 

 at about the same time. We found one man at the head of the agri- 

 cultural college. He found James Wilson; I found I. K. Roberts — a 

 man who had gone east from Iowa. In each case that one man knew 

 pretty near all that was to be known about agriculture. There have 

 been wonderful changes since that time, and now, instead of one man 

 being able to carry in his head all that is known about agriculture, if 

 is could be evenly distributed, I suppose it would take twenty-five or 

 thirty of them to carry it all. Here is Professor Evvard. If there is 

 anything that he doesn't know about breeding pigs, I wish somebody 

 would bring it up. That is the portion of agriculture that belongs to 

 him. But if we should ask him something about the blight of the 

 pear tree, or something about what to do for the Colorado potato 

 beetle, he would run and crawl under the bed. I imagine he would 

 not pretend to know anytliing a])out it. P.ut if you want to know 



