NINTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III 87 
pace with the demands of the times, seconded by the leading farmers 
in the different communities; and they are going right on. We need 
not oncern ourselves, then, I think, about the question of whether we 
can procure the new information, but we must concern ourselves with 
the question of how we are going to get this information to the people 
who are to use it; that is, what are the means by which the rising 
generation are going to be educated in Improved agriculture? 
One means is the farmers' institute; and I am delighted to know 
that most of the counties in this state have it, and I trust that we 
will never let it die out. I want to say a word more about that if 
I don't reach the limit of my time. 
Another is the agricultural college. I won't stop to pay my respects 
to that; I know the regard in which you hold it. 
The third is the agricultural press; and as I shall probably not 
have an opportunity of speaking of that again, I want to pay a tribute 
to the wonderful things that it has done for the farm and the farmer. 
It is held in different esteem from what it once was, and there are 
reasons for it. Of course all sorts of things appear in the agricultural 
colimans of the press, because they are open to every one; but the peo- 
ple who are the dominant spirits in the agricultural press today are 
people who know agriculture from the ground up; that is, they have 
had their hands and feet in touch with Mother Earth, and they have 
had scientific training beside. 
There is the work that the agricultural college is doing, in addition 
to its resident courses, by its extension work in the short courses; and 
there is the possibility of a correspondence course; and with these it 
seems to me you have covered all the available means of giving this in- 
formation. 
What is the trouble with all those things? They are all good, but 
there are a few deficiencies. One is that they reach so small a portion 
of the people; another is that they reach them after mature years. 
It is only the occasional man who is thoroughly open-minded to hold- 
ing new ideas after he is forty years of age, and that hits some of us 
pretty hard. The wonderful Gladstone was constantly open to new 
truths, but he was a rare exception. We do not readily change. If this 
movement is important, and if, purely for the sake of agriculture, the 
future generations are to know more about the science and art of agri- 
culture than they have known, we must accept and use the only educa- 
tional factor in America that reaches all the people practically, and 
reaches them at an age when they are capable of learning. If there 
were no other reason, it seems to me we wall have to expect the public 
schools to give to the coming generations the knowledge of agriculture 
which they will need. 
If the demands and needs of agriculture were the only reasons for 
putting this study into the public schools, we might hesitate somewhat; 
but there are other reasons. Regardless of its effect upon agriculture, 
it is worth all the trouble and pains it is going to take, for the sake 
of its educational value alone. The common people for years have 
been demanding that the public schools give a more practical education. 
