254 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The city is a magnet that draws the population from the country. 

 Fewer farmers are needed from decade to decade because each farm 

 worker can produce proportionately more than formerly. The en- 

 larged percentage of population in the city and the lessened propor- 

 tion of people on the farm is a result of economic and industrial 

 changes, not of mere sentiment, as some philanthropists assume. 

 It is far easier for rural people to become city people than for city 

 children to be educated to live and work in the country. The city 

 needs a constant supply of strong people from the country, and God 

 pity the day when the city can no longer bring in virile blood from 

 the country. 



We must take the situation as we find it. We do not want too 

 many people in the country, because that would mean an over pro- 

 duction of rural products. We want only so many people in the 

 country as will get sufficient remuneration for their work, so that 

 the children may have the means for at least a high school educa- 

 tion. Our city high schools lead from the farm; our agricultural 

 high school educates a goodly number for the farm, and its capacity 

 should be rapidly multiplied, because it makes a class of people who 

 are really trained in the science and art of farming and farm home 

 making. But, how are we going to get hold of the hundreds of 

 thousands who do not pass beyond the country schools? How are 

 we to teach the great mass of the country youth better farming and 

 better home making? We must first modify the education of the 

 teachers of the rural schools. If we could have one generation of 

 rural school teachers, who, without lessening the effort for good 

 instruction in the common branches, could teach of the farm and 

 the farm home, the next generation of farm boys and girls would be 

 better prepared to become teachers of the generation following 

 them. Through our agricultural school, through our summer 

 teachers' institutes and through other agencies, we must train a class 

 of rural school teachers. 



With the already full curriculum, and with the complaint that the 

 common studies are not well taught, it is asked how we are going 

 to find means of putting in more work and teach rural pupils some- 

 thing about their present and future life and work. In the first place 

 our agricultural colleges are building up a wonderful body of scien- 

 tific and interesting thought in agriculture and home making. The 

 American experiment stations and the national Department of Ag- 

 riculture are doing better work than those of any other country, and 

 their literature is already rich with interesting and useful facts. What 

 we need to do is to get more men and women who are in 

 touch with agricultural science and agricultural education, and 



