8 FARM DEVELOPMENT 



under its control. In this way the State and the Nation 

 are able to study farm management and many special 

 questions relating to farming, on each large area of 

 definite kind of soil and in each climatic and agricul- 

 tural area. All the leading countries of the world are 

 conducting agricultural researches, though no other has 

 so extensive an organization as the United States. In 

 the nineteenth century, there was spent in this way, in 

 the world, probably $25,000,000, and appropriations for 

 this purpose are being so rapidly increased that there 

 will have been spent more than twice that amount in the 

 first decade of the twentieth century. By the time farm 

 youths born in 1900 are in middle life, there will have 

 accumulated a body of agricultural knowledge resulting 

 from an investment of probably $500,000,000. These 

 expenditures are resulting in a large accumulation 

 of scientific and practical facts useful to farmers 

 and farm home makers. From this great mass of 

 knowledge, teachers are gradually sorting out portions 

 which are peculiarly adapted to use in making text- 

 books for schools for farm youth. It would seem good 

 statesmanship to assume that this knowledge will suc- 

 cessfully knock at the doors even of our rural schools and 

 there find a place beside the three R's, so that each farm 

 boy and girl may have the key to this vast store of 

 knowledge, and that our schools will be developed to 

 bring this information successfully to all youths who arc 

 to become farmers. 



While Congress provided only for colleges of agricul- 

 ture, the movement which was crystallized into the 

 Federal law of 1862 has resulted also in developing agri- 

 cultural education in schools below collegiate grade. 

 Thus a number of agricultural high schools of secondary 

 school grade have been successfully organized ; agricul- 

 ture has also found its way with some degree of success 

 into the secondary courses of public schools in cities, 



