698 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



city depend upon the farm, yet every man's child has the opportunity to 

 get a good education except the farmer's. It has long been the disgrace 

 of the country districts that the cattle and horses are better provided for 

 and trained than the children. Farmers who have ventilators in their 

 barns have been known as school directors to vote against putting modern 

 heating and ventilating systems in the schoolhouse because it cost too 

 much. A few months in the year when the weather is the coldest and 

 mud and snow the deepest is the only time the country children have a 

 chance to prepare for life's work. 



As a second reason, it may become necessary in the near future as a 

 means of self-preservation. A few years ago Dr. Vv'illiam Cook, in a 

 lecture before a British association, showed by statistics that as man 

 advances in civilization he requires a wheat diet, that about all the land 

 adapted to the growth of wheat is under cultivation, and that unless 

 more grain can be raised per acre the wheat crop will soon be below the 

 demand. He suggested the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen as the remedy. 

 May it not be possible that a cheap source of nitrogen will not alone 

 solve the problem? Would not inore intelligent farmers who could under- 

 stand and apply the laws of nature be a more likely solution than the 

 mere cheapening of a fertilizer? If what I have said is true the suc- 

 cessful farmer's education demands that the future farmer and his wife 

 should be educated in the elementary principles of mechanics and elec- 

 tricity, to understand the machines which he has to handle, and enough 

 chemistry must be added to enable him to understand and work out a 

 balanced ration or a fertilizer; bacteriology and sanitary science so that 

 he may combat the lower enemies which are on every hand; mathematics 

 and bookeeping sufficient so that he can keep account of the profit and 

 loss account; enough of nature study that he may find pleasure as well as 

 profit in observing what is going on around him and make and interpret 

 such experiments as will improve his crop production. Enough independ- 

 ence should be installed that the young man may think for himself and 

 be able to cut loose from the methods used by the forefathers and try 

 up-to-date methods; enough history, literature and art to make the farmer's 

 boy and girl appreciate the surroundings in which they live and the 

 country life around them, so that they will appreciate their surroundings 

 and not be in a hurry to go to the cities where they can make a few 

 more dollars. 



This, it seems to me, is what the successful farmer's education demands. 

 This, I realize, would necessitate a great change in our common school 

 system, but you see with few exceptions it is only trying to teach the 

 children what the Farmers' Institutes are trying to teach the farmer and 

 his wife. We all realize that "it is hard to teach old dogs new tricks." 

 The time to inoculate new ideas is during the years of school life. Then 

 all could be reached. What a small percentage of the farmers now get any 

 benefit from the instruction which the state so liberally supplies in the 

 institutes. Centralizing rural schools would be necessary. The cost of 

 education, in the long run it would be an investment that would pay well 

 and of which we could well be proud. 



