154 The State and the Farmer 



they cannot teach it effectively, and that such 

 teaching should be isolated and that it exists 

 for a class. Persons in the localities in which 

 the separate schools are established will bene- 

 fit by them. Persons who attend other schools 

 will be debarred the privilege of being taught 

 in terms of the country environment. 



I hold that education in terms of the envir- 

 onment is the right of every citizen ; and in 

 the open country this kind of education is 

 agricultural education, whether so called or 

 not. But every citizen can secure this privilege 

 only when he can have access to it in any of 

 the public schools ; we know that all the public 

 schools together can barely reach all the 

 people. In New York state, for example, there 

 are some fifty-five agricultural counties. There 

 are some 227,000 farms. If each of these 

 counties had an agricultural high school gradu- 

 ating fifty pupils each year, to give only one 

 boy from each farm in the state an agricultural 

 course would require eighty-two years; and 

 new generations are coming on in the 

 meantime. 



