AGRICULTURE 



adjoining school districts have combined 

 and formed the "consolidated" school (see 

 SCHOOLS, COMMON). Schools of this type are 

 as thoroughly graded as those in the smaller 

 cities. The consolidated school is of the great- 

 value to the community. As an educa- 

 tional institution it is a great advance over the 

 one-room schools it has supplanted. But in 

 addition to this it binds together the interests 

 of the community which it serves. The school 

 house is the meeting place for numerous activi- 

 ties such as social gatherings, literary societies. 

 lectures and other entertainments by home 

 or outside talent. The community gains a 

 social atmosphere which it did not possess 

 before, and the long-felt want for these things 

 among the young people is here supplied. 



Advantages. The foregoing discussion leads 

 to two conclusions there is no more desirable 

 place in which to live than the country, and 

 there is no more desirable occupation than 



100 AGRICULTURE 



that of agriculture. The inhabitants of rural 

 communities may have as much pleasure as 

 those of the city. Agriculture is as remuner- 

 ative and as free from uncertainties as any 

 other line of business and, as a class, the farm- 

 ers are the most self-reliant and independent 

 men of the nation. To the young man and 

 the young woman the farm should offer special 

 inducements in its opportunities for the devel- 

 opment of the highest type of character. Says 

 an eminent authority: 



The farm offers opportunity to develop a more 

 decent and desirable condition of life a place 

 where one can develop a physical, social and 

 moral life superior to that which is possible to 

 the great majority of the people who dwrll in 

 the city. 



A poet also uttered a truthful statement : 



Of all pursuits by man invented 

 The farmer is the best contented ; 

 His profit sure, his calling high, 

 And on his labors all rely. W.F.R. 



Agricultural Education 



The foundation of agriculture on a scientific 

 basis and its elevation to the rank of a profes- 

 sion is distinctly the work of the last half of 

 the nineteenth century. There was a time, no 

 more than a generation or two ago, when the 

 average farmer looked with contempt on what 

 he called "book farming." Who, he asked, 

 could tell him more about his farm than he 

 himself knew? He ploughed and harrowed, 

 planted and harvested as he had always done, 

 and as his ancestors had done before him. 

 Most of his working principles were the out- 

 come of his own experience or of the tradition 

 of the neighborhood. When chemists and 

 biologists first began to explain to him how 

 he could improve his methods, they got little 

 thanks for their offered help. It was not long, 

 however, before farmers began to see the 

 value of the facts which scientists were slowly 

 establishing, and then came the development 

 of a system by which the individual farmer 

 might learn to use the knowledge which others 

 had gained for him. 



To-day the education of boys and girls for 

 life on the farms reaches from the common 

 school to college. It goes beyond: it reaches 

 older people whose school days were gone be- 

 fore the dawn of the new era, and it continues 

 to affect those who have had the training for 

 farm life and are actually engaged in agri- 

 culture. It gives them not merely the facts 

 which help them to raise crops, but it goes 



farther, and in the words of Liberty H. Bailey," 

 it is "the expression of a rapidly crystallizing 

 desire to make rural life all that it is capable 

 of becoming and to understand and to realize 

 in the best way all the natural products of 

 the earth." 



The modern system of agricultural education 

 naturally falls into three divisions: (1) instruc-' 

 tion in colleges and universities; (2) instruc- 

 tion in secondary schools; (3) instruction in 

 common or primary schools. Each of these 

 divisions has had a gradual development, and 

 each has shown from time to time, and shows 

 to-day, a wide variety in the methods of indi- 

 vidual institutions. Each, therefore, will be 

 considered in detail. 



Institutions of Collegiate Rank. It is a re- 

 markable fact that the first systematic instruc- 

 tion in agriculture was begun by institutions 

 which stood at the top of the educational 

 scale. The "chemistry of agriculture" was 

 announced in 1751 as a study in a model course 

 for colleges, prepared by one William Smith. 

 His plan was adopted in the Philadelphia 

 Academy, out of which grew the University of 

 Pennsylvania. The original prospectus of 

 King's College (now Columbia University) 

 dated May lil, 1754, mentioned animal hus- 

 bandry, arid in 1792 a professorship of botany 

 and agriculture was established there. At that 

 time there was a general public interest in 

 agriculture. The organization of agricultural 



