234 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



together were willing to attempt it. There is, 

 therefore, no way but to provide for this practical 

 instruction in the college itself. It is unjust to 

 the boy graduate of twenty-two and misleading to 

 the public to give a college degree which predicates 

 a knowledge of rural affairs, when the instructors 

 all know that the first attempt that the student 

 makes to embody his learning in visible, remunera- 

 tive results, will almost certainly fail. Indeed, he 

 may be so humiliated that his college enthusiasm 

 and his ideals of a more intelligent rural life will 

 be shattered and perhaps for life. 



General agriculture is now the only subject in 

 which students are not required to become fairly 

 skillful before they are expected to take up its 

 practice. The students of chemistry, of mechanic 

 arts, of civil engineering, of the law all do over 

 and over again as nearly as possible the very things 

 that they will have to do when they go out to take 

 up their chosen calling. What use would a rail- 

 way have for the graduate of a college of Civil 

 Engineering who had not progressed farther along 

 the applied side of his profession than to be able 

 to carry a Gunter's chain? The railways demand 

 men who can do things, real things that are too 

 difficult for untrained men, and the stress is laid 

 on the doing and not on the theory. 



