CHAPTER XVIII 



AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 



TN some ways, the most important of all the 

 -*- influences set in motion since the beginning 

 of the period of the New Earth is the revival 

 in interest in farming; or, better put, the 

 creation of interest. Very largely this has been 

 due to agricultural education, now at flood- 

 tide. In all the centuries, the work of the 

 farmer had been, from many points of view, 

 menial. Those who could own and operate 

 great estates, with some one else to do the 

 work, and with all the absence of disagreeable 

 friction which wealth implies, were happy in 

 their choice; — the vast mass of the farmers, 

 however, were bound down to a distasteful 

 life. Those adventurous spirits who did the 

 pioneer work of opening the great West fre- 

 quently were so deeply in love with the wild 

 free life of the frontier that they entered 

 with zest upon the hardships and privation of 

 farm life ; but a very large number of the men 



