NINTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III 115 
People are getting new views and new light on this great question of 
better farming. I wish that I might have the time to tell you what has 
been done with the lands in Holland and Denmark. You all know how 
their lands have increased in value because of the revenue from them 
justified it — up to $400 per acre. What are they doing? They have ex- 
perts out finding what the market demands, and then they grow the 
best that can be produced in those lines. Prices, of course, are the 
highest. Heven't we been extravagant and wasteful and prodigal in 
this country? Some of you used to live in New York State or Pennsyl- 
vania or New England. You can go down there and buy farms today 
for from $10 to $20 an acre. I saw advertised in one list 150 acres in 
central New York, with an eight-room house and two big barns, for 
$1,500. Why is it? Because the men down there have been absolutely 
wasteful. They have had to buy a place to put fertilizer on; that is about 
all it amounts to. I did see, however, that some of them have estab- 
lished sanatariums for taking care of cats! 
I have been amazed at the lack of attention that has been given by 
the farmer to the school problem and the educational problem. Prob- 
ably the largest percentage of his tax goes for school purposes, and yet 
how many have paid any attention to it except simply to see that their 
daughter or their neighbor's daughter got a place to teach in the country 
school. There is to much of that. There has been too little of educa- 
tion that has been of any practical good to the boy and girl that have 
grown up on the farm. If the boy does have any ambition to succeed, 
they send him down to the high school, and the high school teacher 
says: "Here is a pretty good candidate for the ministry;" or, "he will 
make a pretty good lawyer or doctor." The fact is that that boy ought 
to go right back to the farm, and he will make a success if he goes 
there; whereas these teachers that are trying to train him will make him 
an utter failure in life. You are entitled, paying the taxes that you do, 
to a schooling for your children that will fit them for life. Education 
should be vocational as well as cultural, and if the boys and girls once 
get interested in the vocational education you know what they do; they 
quit school as soon as they get to the eighth grade, and that is the last 
of their education, except as they go out and get it in the experience of 
the world. We are not educating men today even for good mechanics. 
The apprenticeship system is practically gone; it is all piece work. A 
man goes down and gets hold of a machine that drives pegs into the 
holes, if he is making shoes. He should be educated along better lines. 
Let him find out where he belongs, and then if you qualify him for that 
work he is going to make a glorious success of it; but if you try to 
make him something that he is not fit for, because you think he is a 
brighter boy than some one else has, you are likely to make the mistake 
of your lives. Education should be broader. What is it for? It is to 
fit a man for his environment; and the one thing that you ought to give 
your child is a chance for him to expand and find out himself what he is 
good for. When he discovers that bent, with a proper educational system, 
educating the head, the eye and the hand, that boy is going to make 
a success of life. This is coming. I haven't seen the president's message 
yet; it has been delivered today, I suppose; but I imagine you are going 
