510 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



I am glad that societies have already been formed to promote industrial 

 education, and that their membership includes manufacturers and leaders 

 of labor unions, educators and publicists, men of all conditions who are 

 interested in education and in industry. It is such co-operation that offers 

 most hope for a satisfactory solution of the question as to what is the 

 best form of industrial school, as to the means by which it may be ar- 

 ticulated with the public school system, and as to the way to secure for 

 the boys trained therein the opportunity to acquire in the industries the 

 practical skill which alone can make them finished journeymen. 



THE FABMEE IN RELATION TO THE WELFARE OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY. 



There is but one person whose welfare is as vital to the welfare of the 

 whole country as is that of the wage-worker who does manual labor; 

 and that is the tiller of the soil — the farmer. If there is one lesson 

 taught by history it is that the permanent greatness of any state must 

 ultimately depend more upon the character of its country population 

 than upon anything else. No growth of cities, no growth of wealth, c? 

 make up for a loss in either the number or the character of the farming 

 population. In the United States more than in almost any other country, 

 we should realize this and should prize our country population. When 

 this nation began its independent existence it was as a nation of farmers. 

 The towns were small and were for the most part mere sea coast trading 

 and fishing ports. The chief industry of the country was agriculture, 

 and the ordinary citizen was in some way connected with it. In every 

 great crisis of the past a peculiar dependence has had to be placed upon 

 the farming population; and this dependence has hitherto been justified. 

 But it can not be justified in the future if agriculture is permitted to sink 

 in the scale as compared with other employments. We can not afford 

 to lose that pre-eminently typical American, the farmer who owns his own 

 farm. 



ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL FACTORS AFFECTING RVRAL POPULATIONS. 



Yet it would be idle to deny that in the last half century there has 

 been in the eastern half of our country a falling off in the relative con- 

 dition of the tillers of the soil, although signs are multiplying that the 

 nation has waked up to the danger and is preparing to grapple effect- 

 ively with it. East of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio and the 

 Potomac there has been on the whole an actual shrinkage in the num- 

 ber of the farming population since the civil war. In the states of this 

 section there has been a growth of population — in some an enormous 

 growth — but the growth has taken place in the cities, and especially in 

 the larger cities. This has been due to certain economic factors, such 

 as the extension of railroads, the development of machinery, and the 

 openings for industrial success afforded by the unprecedented growth of 

 cities. The increased facility of communication has resulted in the 

 withdrawal from rural communities of most of the small, widely dis- 

 tributed manufacturing and commercial operations of former times, and 

 the substitution therefor of the centralized commercial and manufacturing 

 industries of the cities. 



The chief offset to the various tendencies which have told against the 

 farm has hitherto come in the rise of the physical sciences and their 



