THE NEW CALL TO THE FARM. 21 



farm." Two score years have not yet gone since those words 

 were uttered. To-day they are fulfilled. It is now generally 

 known that agriculture offers an immense field for investiga- 

 tion and development by strictly scientific methods. Men of 

 large business experience are going into it, and well-to-do 

 professional men and merchants are taking it up as a feature 

 of their summer life, finding in serious contact with the soil 

 a worthy exercise of their highest faculties, and reaping from 

 their labor a delightful experience of things brought to pass. 

 Those who are already on the farm have come to realize that 

 the best mental equipment is none too good for the tillers of the 

 soil. They have demanded schools and colleges and courses 

 of instruction for themselves and their sons which shall fit them 

 to make of the farm a plant for the scientific and skilful pro- 

 duction of all that it will yield. Statesmen and educators in- 

 culcated and fostered the same idea. Washington, a practical 

 farmer, whose technical education was probably second to that 

 of no man of his time in America, repeatedly brought to the 

 attention of Congress the importance of providing adequate 

 educational facilities and other encouragements in agriculture. 

 Partly out of these recommendations, but more immediately 

 out of the seed distribution originated in the Department of 

 State during the Presidency of John Quincy Adams, sprang the 

 United States Department of Agriculture, which in our day has 

 attained such immense proportions, and whose work is of such 

 incalculable profit and importance. The different states of the 

 Union, seeing the importance of technical training among the 

 farming community, have provided colleges for this purpose, 

 which now dot the land in all its sections. These schools are 

 surrounded with ample farms in which practical demonstra- 

 tion goes hand in hand with the theories taught and the facts 



