146 BOAED OF AGKICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



most other kinds of business, and for this reason help prefer 

 employment where they can earn the same wages at all sea- 

 sons of the year. Then, too, when help are thrown out of 

 employment on the farm in the fall and are compelled to 

 seek work elsewhere they are quite likely not to present them- 

 selves for employment on the farm the next spring. Farm- 

 ers should change their methods in this respect. The help 

 are obliged to incur the same expenses in winter as in sum- 

 mer, and to give their time in one season the same as in the 

 other, and there is no good reason why they should not have 

 the same pay throughout the year. By the adoption of di- 

 versified farming and the proper rotation of crops it is fea- 

 sible and not financially detrimental for the farmer to employ 

 his help at the same wages throughout the entire year. If 

 the farmers generally would plan to do this, they would find 

 it easier to get good help and help that would be more likely 

 to remain with them from year to year. 



Then, again, much could be done to relieve the scarcity of 

 farm help by the proper education of the farmer's children. 

 Until recently it was thought by most people that educated 

 youth should seek a vocation outside the farm. It rarely 

 happened, but when a college-bred young man remained upon 

 the farm his action was regarded as an evidence of his lack 

 of ambition and aspiration for the best sphere of work. This 

 public belief has operated in the past and is operating now 

 to depopulate the farms of educated young people. Then, 

 too, we have believed so ardently in the value of education 

 that we have kept our children constantly in school to the 

 age of maturity, and thereby deprived them of learning the 

 details of farm work. The farmers of England declare that 

 unless children learn the details of farm work and the man- 

 agement of animals before they are fourteen, they never learn 

 them at all. They say that when the practice of youth is 

 neglected, the theory of later years is expounded in vain. 

 This belief actuates people who favor the teaching of agri- 

 culture in our public schools to insist upon having such 

 teaching begin when the pupils are young. The teaching of 

 agriculture in the public schools has been of great use in the 

 development of rural happiness and prosperity in Holland 



