EDUCATION. 155 



Wilson has shown it to us. It is above all things Education 

 that we want. 



" The farmer will not fail the Nation," so wrote Mr, 

 Wilson a few years previously, in igo6, when the raising of 

 public expenditure upon agricultural Education and 

 Research to £2,000,000 a year had just been decided upon, " if 

 the Nation does not fail the farmer. He will need Education, 

 to know the powers of the soil which are now hidden to 

 him. The prospective yearly expenditure of $10,000,000 

 for Education and Research must have enormous effects." 

 It has had them. We are willing to tax ourselves heavily 

 to make up for the deficiency in the output issuing from a 

 faulty machine. Would it not be better policy to remedy 

 the fault at its source, in the machine, and then let the out- 

 put take care of itself ? What do we do in the way of 

 Education for Agriculture and for rural life in comparison 

 with Belgium, with Switzerland, with Prussia, with the 

 United States ? In a Report on Agricultural Education 

 in Germany delivered to the International Institute of 

 Agriculture, Professor Riimke, of the Agricultural High 

 School of Berne, says : 



" The great progress which Agriculture has achieved in 

 Germany during the last quarter of a century is the result of the 

 union of Practice with Science, and proves that money spent on 

 research and on education to every class brings in a high rate 

 of interest and is compensated by the increase of returns of land 

 taxes and of revenue from railways." 



Prussia, with a population one-ninth smaller than our 

 own, provides 5,564 teachers of various kinds for the service 

 of Agriculture, in 1,227 distinct establishments. These are 

 the official figures for 1914. That figure counts some men 

 twice over, but it does not include the considerable number 

 of teachers sent out by co-operative and kindred societies 

 (includung many " Peasants' Unions "), nor teachers 

 employed at veterinary colleges and forest schools ; nor 

 the University Professors borrowed for specific courses of 

 lectures ; nor yet the teachers at about 4,000 rural continua- 

 tion schools ; nor yet the instructors and instructresses 

 supplied by various societies and corporations without 



