62 THE LURE OF THE LAND 



older countries, where women are mingled with men 

 in the fields and hitched with dogs to the carts. 



Far be it from me to advocate a condition of affairs 

 in which one sex lives in idleness. There is plenty 

 indeed for women to do, and the idle woman, like the 

 idle man, is a constant threat to society. But the 

 farmer's wife and the farmer's daughter in my opinion 

 cannot be justly expected to join him in the work of 

 the fields. He may have sons who, after the age of 

 ten, would be of some use on holidays and vacations, 

 and after they are eighteen may give him three years 

 of full handed labor. The boy, however, soon becomes 

 a man in his own rights, and the farmer who depends 

 upon the labor of his sons alone, will in due course 

 come to the limit of his tether. Just as the manufac- 

 turer cannot do all of the manual work of the factory, 

 so the farmer who possesses from one hundred to one 

 thousand acres can do only a tithe of the work on the 

 farm. 



LABOR FUNDAMENTAL. 



The question of labor is fundamental. The one 

 striking fault of agricultural education at the present 

 time is its failure to train agricultural laborers. There 

 should be instruction in the country schools and the 

 city schools of a theoretical and practical nature in 

 farm labor. The idea has grown abroad that farm 

 labor is unskilled labor, and unfortunately to a large 

 extent this is true. Going into my corn field one day, 

 I noticed that the cultivators did not seem to be doing 

 a good piece of work. Upon examination I found that 

 none of the shares were scouring. The rust which had 

 come upon the plate during a period of rest was still 

 there, and instead of the plowshare turning the dirt 



