22 THE NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [5:1— jam., .,-g 



On the other hand the agriculturist must have a very wide 

 range of knowledge in order successfully to carry en his business. 

 He is not in danger of the same narrowness, so far as a single 

 manual or mechanical operation is concerned; so that an 

 agricultural education may be as broadening as the ideal indus- 

 trial education in the city and, at the same time, bear directly 

 on his business. 



Where the city boy learns the use of carpenter's tools to 

 "co-ordinate muscular activities," "train the eye and hand," "be- 

 come handy about tne house," etc., the country boy, being an 

 important hand on tne home-place has immediate need of 

 ability to make real chicken coops, to mend real fences. 1 have 

 been uable to see just why the sons of brokers and railway 

 auditors, or even of machinists, spent two nours a week with toy 

 forges or made make-believe castings of lead, unless it was to 

 teach a general industrial process and incidentally vary the work 

 of the gymnasium. But the country boy often has real harrow 

 teeth to fix, real whifne-tree irons to make in order to save half-a- 

 day's journey to town. 



We are so accustomed to associate a manual training depart- 

 ment with electrically driven lathes, and other expensive fittings, 

 that we overlook the growing amount ot real manual training 

 work tnat is being introduced into village and consolidated rural 

 schools. One principal told me this spring he had considered it 

 hopless to attempt to introduce manual training into his school 

 because a fellow principal in a neignboring manufacturing 

 center had told him the equipment would cost $7,000. But 

 the teacher of agriculture in the same school was having the 

 children make brooders at home as best they could to care for 

 the chicks hatching in the incubators loaned the school by farmer 

 patrons. I saw a manual training department in the school of 

 a central Ohio village with four home-made benches, each with 

 an outfit costing not over $20 while the entire equipment did not, 

 cost over $ 100. The "plant" was installed in a one-room cottage 

 near the school; and the boys seemed to be getting an immense 

 amount of satisfaction out ot it. Much of their work was re- 

 lated to their home lite. 



It is certainly a mark of progress and an encouraging sign to 

 find in a school three miles from the nearest postofhee, and that 

 only a hamlet ot two or three stores and a station on a "coal- 



