X PREFACE 



changed. Not only is the modern, up-to-date farmer 

 learning how to make two blades of grass grow 

 where but one grew before, but he is also learning 

 how to do so at half the previous cost. He has 

 learned that he is called upon to meet a competition 

 of which his father knew nothing. Steam and elec- 

 tricity, the telegraph and the telephone, have brought 

 the ends of the earth into such juxtaposition that the 

 producer of to-day is brought into competition with 

 producers in the same line from every part of the 

 earth. The day when farming could be followed on 

 indifferent methods with success has passed away. 

 Farming has become a profession. It requires as 

 high a degree of scientific and business knowledge to 

 conduct it successfully as any of the various kinds of 

 business in which men engage for a livelihood, and 

 from which they extract all the success, happiness, 

 and pleasure that comes to them in this world. 



State agricultural colleges, State and National ex- 

 periment stations have opened up avenues of special 

 preparation for the profession of agriculture not 

 available to our fathers. They offer to the farmer 

 boy an opportunity to fit himself, tuition free, for his 

 life work equal to that opened to any other class. 

 Josh Billings' advice to his son " Seek to know some- 

 thing of everything and everything of something " is 

 no longer applicable. In his time the curricula of our 

 colleges sought to cover a general knowledge of 

 many things. We live now in an age of specialties. 

 The college curriculum shows this. To complete the 

 special courses taught in any of our great universities 

 would require continuous study for more than one 

 hundred and fifty years. Safer advice nowadays than 



