No. 4.] AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 131 



sisterhood of colleges, until to-day it is our })ride and boast 

 that, so far as the variety and excellence of educational 

 advantages are concerned, few people are superior to those 

 of the State of Massachusetts. 



Of the one hundred and two persons who reached Plym- 

 outh on that first voyage of the ' ' Mayflower " thirty-four 

 were adult males. What had been their occupation in their 

 Leyden home we do not know ; but it is quite certain that 

 the "prosperous labor and harvest" of tliat first summer 

 and autumn at Plymouth show that then, at least, there was 

 an "agricultural class" among them. In addition to the 

 thirty-four males mentioned above there were, in that " May- 

 flower " company, " nineteen men-servants, sailors and crafts- 

 men, who were hired for temporary service." Here we have 

 our " other industrial classes." Of the men found in the 

 numerous small settlements on the coast of Massachusetts 

 and who were afterwards included in the Massachusetts Bay 

 Colony, many were fishermen. But the self-same stern 

 necessity that makes all classes of people, the high and the 

 humble, the rich and the poor, dependent upon the tillers of 

 the soil for the " bread that strengtheneth man's heart," and 

 upon the blacksmith and carpenter and wdieelwright for the 

 utensils and conveniences necessary to even the simplest 

 stages of civilized life, shows that among the people of this 

 colony also there must have been found agricultural and 

 other industrial classes. 



What idea of education now was in the mind of these 

 colonists? Let us read from the Massachusetts law of 1642, 

 to which reference has already been made : — 



This court [so the record runs] , taking into serious consideration 

 the great neglect of many parents and masters in training up their 

 children in learning and labor and other employments which may 

 be profitable to the Commonwealth do hereby order and decree 

 that, in every town, the chosen men appointed to manage the pru- 

 dential affairs of the same shall henceforth stand charged with the 

 care of the redress of this evil ; so as they shall be sufficiently 

 punished by fines, for the neglect thereof, upon presentment of 

 grand jury, or other information of complaint in any court in this 

 jurisdiction : and for this end, they or the greater number of them 

 shall have power to take accoimt, from time to time, of all parents 



