TEACHING THE CULTIVATORS 51 



increased, within very few years, from 20 to 37 hectolitres — ces 

 risultats sont diis jpresque exclusivement a V amelioration des semences, 

 so officially says the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, which is not 

 thereby blowing its own trumpet, inasmuch as the improvement is 

 the work directly and solely of the Dutch National Agricultural 

 Society — clearly we might do worse than follow this " foreign " 

 custom in its methods of providing for purity and high quality of 

 seed corn. There are more such cases that might be quoted. We 

 are now all in favour of " Dutch " barns, and the methods of French 

 cultivators of " primeurs " are not lost upon us. However, the 

 object of our studying what is done abroad is, not directly to teach 

 us new " tricks," which may turn out to be altogether out of har- 

 mony with our local conditions, but to have our mind opened to 

 new ideas. 



There is nothing to open the mind and stimulate thought like the 

 looking around us in other countries. And that is just the effect 

 that we desire to produce in our average farmers. It cannot be said 

 that they are not a thinking class, but their thoughts run in grooves, 

 the high borders of which shut out all taking note of what happens 

 to the right or left of the long-trodden horse-gear path. Seeing what 

 is done elsewhere differently from what one is accustomed to at 

 home instinctively and irresistibly awakens the thought : Why is 

 the thing done differently from the way in which w T e do it ? And 

 thinking out the why and wherefore of the foreign method naturally 

 leads people to inquire also into the " w r hy and wherefore " of what 

 is being done at home, make a man who has been used to doing 

 things — as so many of our farmers are, merely because that is the 

 way that he was taught, the way in which his father and grand- 

 father and great grandfather did it. Make him inquire seriously 

 why things are done in this way and your battle of teaching will be 

 half won. From thinking about the Why, our man will be instinc- 

 tively led on to reflect whether things might not be done here in a 

 better way. And so his mind will become cleared and active. Just 

 look at our travellers abroad, how they examine things attentively, 

 minutely, closely, things the like of which they pass by without 

 paying the slightest regard to at home. 



How very much our almost studied ignorance of foreign ways 

 stands in the way of improvement I had a telling instance of when 

 undertaking to explain in this country the methods of co-operative 

 banking which had been in most successful operation both in Ger- 

 many and in Italy, not to mention other countries, for something 

 like forty years, and was producing millions of pounds for working 



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