AN UNTILLED FIELD IN EDUCATION 217 



of the individual farmer depends largely upon 

 his business sense and his technical education, 

 it is folly to hope that the success of agriculture 

 as an industry and the influence of farmers as a 

 class can be based solely upon the ability of each 

 farmer to raise a big crop and to sell it to ad- 

 vantage. General intelligence, appreciation of 

 the trend of economic and social forces, capacity 

 to co-operate, ability to voice his needs and his 

 rights, are just as vital acquirements for the 

 farmer as knowing how to make two blades of 

 grass grow where but one grew before. It 

 finally comes to this, that the American farmer 

 is obliged to study the questions that confront 

 him as a member of the industrial order and as a 

 factor in the social and political life of the nation, 

 with as much zeal and understanding as he is 

 expected to show in the study of those natural 

 laws governing the soil and the crops and the 

 animals that he owns. 



In this connection it is significant to note that 

 farmers themselves are already quite as interested 

 in the social problems of their particular calling 

 and in the general economic and political ques- 

 tions of the day, as they are in science applied 

 to their business of tilling the soil. Not neces- 

 sarily that they minimize the latter, but they 



