10 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 



abroad that not one graduate in one hundred would ever work. Shortly the prediction took 

 the form of a fact, and the newspapers reported that as a fact which was only what every- 

 body predicted. You may read it now in the papers and journals from one end of the 

 country to the other. The graduates, they all say, are not farmers. The schools are all 

 failures. 



I am sorry that farmers have joined this cry without waiting to see. For, look you, how 

 dark is the picture? Had it come from examination of facts we might say the schools have 

 been wrongly manged, but when it comes from an expectation, and is held to in spite of 

 facts.it shows what the world thinks of labor and of farmers : that the one and the business 

 of the other is in some way inconsistent with a high education. 



This is the way the case was put two years ago in a communication of an educated man 

 to a paper of this State. He says the college is a failure because "nineteen out of every 

 twenty who graduate there never follow agricultural pursuits." He assigns a reason : "And 

 why? Because when a man's brain is educated up to a point where it can provide for the 

 wants of the body without muscular aid it will do it every time in spite of all the sophistry 

 and poetry which can be thrown around the life of toil of a farmer." 



This is a gloomy reason that forever confines farming as a business to an illiterate class. 

 It is a reason that debars progress forever, and puts a distance forever widening between 

 farmers and others. 



THE REMEDY. 



The remedy for this abandonment of the farms is not easy to find. Gov. Seymour of New 

 York, in a long conversation with me, endeavored to impress on my mind the necessity that 

 young men should learn how to make their homes attractive by inexpensive landscape gar- 

 dening, planting of trees, arrangement of shrubs, and the like. He showed by full illustra- 

 tions that rural taste survives, and affords a genuine pleasure to extreme old age. Others 

 dwell on the necessity of that intelligence and culture among farmers that shall insure them 

 a higher social position. 



COMBINIKG LABOB AND STUDY. 



It seems to me that there is little hope of returning students from a college to a farm in 

 any considerable numbers, if they are permitted to pass their college years without manual 

 labor. I think I see in the retaining of habits of daily manual labor, in the interest which 

 studies and labor may be made to shed upon each other, the beginning of the remedy for 

 this abandonment of the farm by young educated men. It certainly does not lie in the fact 

 that the occupation of a farmer does not afford scope for thought, and a field for the em- 

 ployment of the largest fund of knowledge. Except in the more constant contact with 

 other men, ordinary trades and manufactures and commerce offer no such delights for the 

 man of taste as those that the farmer is privileged to enjoy ; the labor is not harder, and is 

 more varied ; and the profits compare well with the average returns for any kind of labor. 

 But labor has not received due honor. 



Man is the creature of habit, and the customs of the world are against receiving an educa- 

 tion and then farming. The xiollege has tried to withstand these tendencies, and one of its 

 best means is its labor system. 



COLLEGE LABOR SYSTEM. 



The following are the principle features of the labor system as existing at the Michigan 

 State Agricultural College : 



1. All the students labor, except when exempt on account of physical disability. This is the 

 requirement of the law of the State, which also prescribes the time, three hours daily, 

 as a general rule. I attach much importance to this rule. The agricultural colleges of 

 Maine and Iowa have nearly similar provisions. Massachusetts requires six hours manual 

 labor a week, excepting however one-third of each year, and still one other third of the 

 senior year, when no labor is required. The other colleges require no labor, but several of 

 them furnish it when applied for. It is sometimes asked why it is not as well to let students 

 labor or not as they may choose. So far as the labor is requisite in order that they should 

 know how to do things, they might as well be excused from the practice of surveying, and 

 of chemical analysis, as of farm and garden work. Very much they can indeed learn at 

 home, if they come from farms ; some do not come from farms ; and many things are 

 done here that may not be done on ordinary farms. 



But there is much in the atmosphere of a place that determines the habits of those that 

 resort to it. Certain colleges are noted for certain characteristics of itsstudents. If astudent 

 goes into a college where almost none work, he will be apt to do as others do, if he can. If 

 the general aspect of the institution is one that looks toward the professions and literature, 

 the ordinary young man will turn his face and bend his steps in the same direction. 



An agricultural college should exert a different tendency. For this reason it should be 



