860 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



the beautiful Willamette Valley in Oregon. Wry is it so famous? What 

 makes you long to see that country? What makes me anxious to see it? 

 Simply because the railroad companies who were anxious to take you 

 and me down there, had advertised it. Now, you may ask, is it not a nice 

 country? Why, it certainly is; but now in turn may I ask, is not Iowa 

 a beautiful country? We read of this and that place having fine land, etc. 

 They may picture to us so that we will long to go there, but the farm, just 

 the farm, the luxuries on the farm are not advertised; consequently the 

 boy begins to think that the farm is not as good a place as somethin.g else 

 and he leaves it, only to find later that the farm was after all as good a 

 place as the other thing and that he was better adapted for the farm. 



If the boy had been interested in the farm and farm life he might 

 not have felt the desire to leave the farm. I am sure Iowa is a good 

 state, even though if be an agricultural state. I also know that I would 

 rather live in northwestern Iowa, or in one of those beautiful western 

 irrigated valleys, than near the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, or 

 near Lincoln Park in Chicago, for that matter. 



I have already taken up too much of your time, but I will now tell 

 you in just a few words how I think agriculture should be taught in the 

 public schools and to what extent. 



We are already on the right track. Farmers' institutes are fine train- 

 ing schools for farmers and the farmer boys. The corn contests are inte- 

 esting the boys over the county. What can the public school do? 



It has been argued that it is impractcial to introduce this branch 

 because the teachers know nothing about the subject themselves. This is 

 no argument. A short time ago, I heard our county superintendent make 

 the remark that "half of our teachers can't read." Would you therefore 

 take reading out of the course of study? Of course you would not. 



We wish, however, to be practical. It is true that our teachers are 

 not versed in this subject; it is also true that our teachers are crowding 

 now to get the work all in, but we will take it for granted that most of 

 our teachers can read, a litle at least. We know that most of the reading 

 courses consist of from five to eight readers. The eight book course, as 

 a rule, has no more work in it that the five book course. Besides these 

 readers most of the courses require some supplemenatry reading to be 

 used with the course. This is the right thing to do, for you know that to 

 read the five readers in school if that were to be all the reading you 

 would do in your lifetime it would amount to but very little. Now, I 

 would suggest that one of the readers be an agircultural reader; if not 

 one of the readers, then one of the supplementary readers. Be careful to 

 select an easy book; I mean a book that presents the matter in plain and 

 simple language. "First Principles of Agiculture" by Goff and Mayne 

 is such a book, and there are other good books on the market. 



It is not necessary for the teacher to know everything about farming, 

 for the book explains itself. The child will be interested in it for it tells 

 him things he has not thought of before. When Jimmy comes home to 

 his mamma, who is worrying over her flowers which the lice are killing, 

 he will say "Mamma, why don't you sprinkle them with soap suds or 

 tobacco water? We have just had a lesson about that in school today." 



