46 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



and minds remain closed to tidings of better methods and a more 

 rational and scientific practice. 



Hence, our Government's insistence upon a right secured to it to 

 supervise individual farmers' farming, and to apply punitive methods 

 in cases in which it judges that not good enough work has been done. 



Seeing that things are so, in spite of many inquiries instituted, 

 reports presented and well-intended measures taken, it may be 

 asked what there may have been amiss in what has been done to 

 keep us in what pretty well every one admits to be an unsatisfactory 

 position. 



It cannot be seriously contended that our authorities — whatever 

 their laches may have been in other respects — have shown indiffer- 

 ence in the matter of agricultural education. They may conceivably 

 not have chosen quite the right methods. But they certainly have 

 displayed an earnest desire to supply what was lacking. They have 

 recast our educational system — apparently taking, like the Ameri- 

 cans, the Prussian system for their model, but re-shaping it with 

 rather less originality than the Americans. There is provision made 

 for education in all grades, from the farm school up to the university. 

 If we do not actually, like the Americans, teach agriculture in our 

 rural elementary schools, no one is likely to find fault with that, 

 because circumstances in the two countries are so entirely different, 

 that in our case that practice may well be judged not to be quite in 

 place. The educational institutions provided are to a great extent 

 admirably officered. There can be no fault to find on this score. 

 If the Board of Agriculture does not ply the agricultural world with 

 all that mass of, in the main, decidedly instructive and " to the 

 point " literature with which the United States Department floods 

 its country, the fully sufficient explanation is that, in the first place, 

 Parliament has not placed it in anything like the same enviable 

 financial position in which Congress has accommodated its own 

 agricultural department ; and, in the second, that our farmers are, 

 in Lord Somerville's words — when he was President of the original 

 Board of Agriculture — " not a reading race," and the difficulty is to 

 make them read what there is, which, in general, is of decidedly 

 good quality. 



However, with all this provision made, farmers — the bulk of them, 

 always excepting the elite — as complained, move only little forward. 

 Much is set before them, as there is before hunger-strikers. But the 

 meat is not consumed. We have provided water for our horse ; but 

 we have not discovered means by which to make him drink. 

 There are various reasons for this. The study of agriculture is 



