Cook: Eugenics and Agriculture 
acters from the parents is not enough. 
In addition to the prenatal inheritance 
there must be a postnatal acquisition 
of civilizing habits and accumulated 
experience of the race, or children with 
the best blood may grow up ignorant 
and irresponsible, as many do. Eugenics 
is conceived very often in too narrow a 
sense, as relating merely to the trans- 
mission of desirable characters, as 
though this alone would solve the prob- 
lems of our civilization. There needs 
to be a sister-science of euphanics, to 
treat of the expression of desirable char- 
acters, the biological factors underlying 
the problems of education. Eugenics 
without euphanics can get nowhere. 
The best seed is wasted unless the plants 
can grow tonormal maturity. Breeding 
a crop to its highest possibilities is of 
little avail unless there are to be farmers 
who know how to give the cultural 
treatment that will allow the characters 
of superior varieties to come regularly 
into expression. Practical eugenics must 
look forward not only to the provision 
of normal parents and normal children, 
but to parents who shall be able to care 
for the normal development of their 
children. 
CHILDREN NEED FARM CONDITIONS 
Not to be raised on a farm is a cruel 
privation, a denial of the normal child- 
hood of our race that no previous eugenic 
precautions or subsequent educational 
manipulations can make good. Many 
excellent and very intelligent people do 
not know that children need farm condi- 
tions, but it is true nevertheless, and 
needs to be recognized before we shall 
have any just or practical appreciation 
of eugenic or educational values. Many 
of our educators know how hopeless the 
urban children are, under the urban 
conditions, but they are engaged to 
handle such children and are doing the 
best they can. The urban problems are 
pressing and cities pay high salaries to 
get capable men. The result is that not 
only our educational institutions, but 
our educational ideas as well, are being 
cast almost exclusively in the urban 
mold, with no recognition of the educa- 
tional value of rural life. Every year 
thousands of misguided parents, all over 
251 
the United States, are moving to towns 
in order that their children may have 
the. ‘‘advantages”’ of the large graded 
schools, the over-crowded education- 
factories where the city children are put 
through the elaborate machinery that is 
necessary to handle helpless humanity 
in large masses. The school is no substi- 
tute for the home, much less the city 
school for the farm home. 
In cities the little children have to be 
sent to the school, the kindergarten, or 
the day-nursery, to keep them out of 
danger while the parents are at work or 
at play, but in the country where the 
children can be out-of-doors they do not 
need to be caged. The projection of 
urban ideas and methods of education 
into the coun*-y makes needless diffi- 
culties. The little children not only do 
not need to be sent to school, but are 
much better off, educationally and 
otherwise, if allowed to stay at home. 
There is no good reason why normal 
children of normal, intelligent parents 
living in the country should be sent to 
school before the eighth or ninth year. 
Nor is there any reason why any favor- 
ably situated country child should go to 
school for more than six months in the 
year. Country schools need to be im- 
proved in many ways, but running them 
longer is not an improvement. 
It is true, of course, that many chil- 
dren, and especially urban children, are 
better off at school than at home, but 
that some children lack favorable home 
conditions does not make it reasonable 
to keep others from such an advantage. 
It would not be argued that all children 
should be taken away from their 
parents because some children are 
orphans, or because some parents are 
incompetent, careless or cruel. Yet 
there can be no doubt that this is very 
frequently the effect of our system, to 
make children practically orphans by 
turning them over wholly to the school. 
PARENTS SHIFT RESPONSIBILITY 
The ten-months school of the town is 
a concession to the convenience of 
parents and serves no truly educational 
purpose. Teachers and pupils would 
both be advantaged if formal tuition 
were limited to six months, instead of 
