SEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III. 83 



cutting down of hills and filling of hollows will be done when the in- 

 stitutes convince the supervisors that the hustling element of the county 

 wants money expended that way. It takes a public sentiment such as can 

 be best expressed through the institute to get appropriations for improve- 

 ments of this kind. 



In nothing is there greater hope of keeping the boys of today on the 

 farms of tomorrow than in the movement for the study of agriculture in 

 the public schools. In this enterprise the institutes are in the lead, as 

 they should be. Such a department of study is advantageous to the 

 scholar in school and after he leaves. The school hours are irksome to 

 many boys. They do not see how school is going to do them any good. 

 They want to do what men do. Men don't have to spell and study gram- 

 mar. The boy thinks grammar won't help a fellow to break a colt. Give 

 the boy something in school that he can see is going to help him to do 

 what his father does, and to do it better than his father has done it, 

 and the school takes on a new attractiveness. 



On the other hand, tt|,ere is the boy who delights to go to school and 

 would like to do nothing else. To him study, the learning of things out- 

 side the life he has always known, is an end in itself. To him the 

 drudgery of farm life is a sad outlook for a life work. Perhaps he pre- 

 fers science. Teach him that in farming he is every day dealing with 

 the very fundamentals of science. He may have a taste for business. 

 Teach him that the farmer's success is dependent on good business man- 

 agement as much as any other. Perhaps he wants to be a manufacturer. 

 Show him that the farmer is, of all men, a producer. Then, when he is 

 sent to haul the litter from the barn, he ceases to look on himself as a 

 scavenger, but as a producer of fertility, in turn to be manufactured Into 

 corn and hay and beef and pork. Has he a taste for art? On the farm 

 his daily rounds bring him at almost every turn upon such pictures as no 

 painter can trace, if he will only look around and see them. Does he 

 love literature? When is a better time and where a better place than 

 the winter evenings on the farm, away from the rushing diversions of 

 the city, to really make the acquaintance of the masters of writing? 

 All the life of the farm, the harvest, the threshing time, teem with char- 

 acters, which, if he could depict them, would make a classic literature. 



The teaching of agriculture in the public schools is making the boys 

 and girls the masters and mistresses of the farm and not its slaves. No 

 agency is doing more to promote this branch of education than the 

 farmers' institutes. They are securing the tidying up of the schoohouses 

 and yards, inculcating in the youngsters that little something known as 

 taste, which costs little, yet makes life a thousand times more worth the 

 living. 



I am informed that a farmers' institute in this State inaugurated the 

 custom of having butter contests, now so common, and which has resulted 

 in improving the quality of butter produced by our Iowa creameries. This 

 same institute has built up the creameries in its county and introduced 

 improved methods of handling milk and cream, so that the cream is de- 

 livered in better condition than formerly. 



