NINTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART XII 697 
unfitted for, and will gradually slow up and stop at the point of develop- 
ment that represents the limit of his natural ability or desire. 
One point I should have mentioned in the beginning. Take good dairy 
papers and read them. When you begin to think about that registered 
bull, post yourself on the different dairy breeds, so you can intelligently 
make a choice. Learn all you can about your business, and be guided 
by the advice and experience of men who are regarded as good authority 
and have been successful. 
The man who is controlled by prejudice and refuses to believe anything 
he reads or hears that differs from what "Dad" used to do, had better 
let dairying alone. 
To be successful as a dairyman requires a man to be progressive and 
willing to learn at every step, always ready to discard unprofitable or 
impractical ideas as soon as recognized, and quick to recognize them. 
IS IT ADVISABLE TO CONSOLIDATE THE RURAL SCHOOLS? 
MRS. JAMES MATEER, OSKALOOSA, IOWA. 
(Before Mahaska County Farmers' Institute.) 
The consolidation of rural schools has long been a topic of much 
interest to those working with the problem of making much of the child's 
few years of life preparation. It is a radical change from the present 
system, and its advantages and disadvantages should be weighed carefully. 
"Look before you leap" is an expression trite, but true. 
The educator in his soul-stirring convention cries for the change. The 
farm mother hampered by her multitudinous duties, untouched by the 
convention's magnetism, cries "wait, wait, not in my child's time," neither 
one really conscious of the standpoint of the other. It is a blessing that 
the conservatism of parents serves as a check to impulsive leaders who 
else might too often experiment with their new-fangled ideas upon the 
child's soul. 
Many a wonderful school improver is advocated in one generation 
that is never heard of in the next. Some, though tried thoroughly, are 
ignominious failures. The pity of it is, that never again, their faults 
erased, can their strength be practiced upon that generation of fleeing 
children. There is not a grey head facing me today, but has a brain both 
marred by some educator's mistake, and rounded by some skillfully di- 
rected force. Each of you is conscious as I speak, of some defect dating 
from what you now can see, was a mistake of some youthful director, and 
you also have some lofty principle, some element of success, power within 
yourself, that has caused you always to bless the day you came in con- 
tact with the teacher who put it there. 
Thus considered, it is a delicate thing to thrust one's bungling hands 
into a school system. It is a task from which the thoughtful person well 
might shrink to advocate from a public platform. A radical change from 
a method of education which certainly has not been a failure in the 
lassing years. 
