64 Agricultural Instruction in tlie Public High Schools 



The " Center " claims to be the highest cultivated place in 

 the state and has a deeper deposit of boulder till and less rock 

 outcrop than most of the hills in the vicinity. Many engage 

 in farming in the summer and work during the winter in mills 

 not far from the town limits. In a hat factory at North Dana, 

 six miles west, a number of women get as high as $20 to $25 

 a week, and bright girls often become sufficiently proficient in 

 one or two years to make fair wages. One farm was pointed 

 out that had just been purchased by a married couple both of 

 whom work in the mills in winter. 



Summer residents form no small part of the village popula- 

 tion and take an interest in the schools. All the high-school 

 pupils of the town and a few non-residents attend here, but two 

 or three school districts have not yet consolidated. The country 

 children are brought to the building in school wagons. 



John Swaney School, McNabb, III. 



The John Swaney School, in north-central Illinois, furnishes 

 a good example of what may be done in an intelligent rural 

 community, independent of any urban influences, and working 

 for a school adapted to its own peculiar needs. It lies in the 

 open country three miles from McNabb the nearest post-office. 

 This is merely a country crossroads with two or three stores 

 and a station on one of the short coal roads in that mining 

 region of the state. The school is on a beautiful campus of 

 twenty-four acres presented by one of the patrons and the prin- 

 cipal benefactor, Mr. John Swaney. He is a well preserved 

 man of eighty-five living a short distance from the school. He 

 takes a keen interest in the school and makes frequent visits 

 to it. The campus includes land under cultivation and a tract 

 of rolling open timber with a large variety of trees, only one 

 or two of which were felled to make room for the building. 

 On it stands a building used as a district school before the con- 

 solidation but now used as a dwelling by the teachers, a grange 

 hall, a roomy horse shed, and the new school building. The 

 latter is a three-story building, on the second floor of which 

 there is an assembly room accommodating 200 or 300 persons 

 and one or two recitation rooms. On the first floor are the 



