AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 235 



In like manner the landowner does not want an 

 agricultural graduate who cannot harness a span 

 of horses, plow a furrow, pack a barrel of apples 

 or trim a tree correctly; nor one who hitches a 

 driving horse to a post with the line without first 

 taking it out of the turrets. Now that the agri- 

 cultural colleges have grown relatively rich and 

 strong and are no longer manned by pioneers but 

 by able, trained and experienced instructors, it is 

 little less than criminal to graduate students who 

 are careless in the use of figures and words ; who 

 cannot make out a balance sheet embodying the 

 results of the operations of a farm; who cannot 

 dig a post hole in the right place nor dig it with 

 the least possible labor nor set three posts in a line ; 

 nor bore a hole straight in a timber without a plum- 

 bob. Some men, I fear many, have been grad- 

 uated, whom you would not trust to harrow the 

 potato patch for fear they would ruin a span of 

 horses by getting it on the harrow or by getting 

 the harrow on top of the span. 



The way to learn one part of agriculture, and 

 a most important part, is to do agriculture. If 

 students object to the toil of learning the 

 fundamentals without remuneration then turn 

 them out to grass and let them graze within the 

 pasture of any other college which will adopt a 



