70 



agricultural science, the more difficult of comprehension do their 

 published works become in the hands of the man hard pressed 

 by the daily affairs of farming. 



The need of the hour is the need of the teacher who can sim- 

 plify language, and tell the boys who are to be farmers in a 

 given town or district the practical bearing of the best research 

 in agriculture on their problems; and who can show the boys, 

 on their own farms and in the laboratory demonstrations at the 

 school, the best methods which are applicable to Massachusetts 

 conditions. It is to meet this need that a system of agricultural 

 departments is proposed in this report. 



The Farm is not Enough. It has been said that " The worst 

 thing about farming in New England is that almost any kind of 

 farmer can get a living on almost any kind of farm." Produc- 

 tive farming the farming for which additional vocational 

 training is here proposed is not eking out from the land the 

 nakedest necessities of life. Productive farming is farming for 

 the community, not merely for the individual; it is economic 

 farming, and as such contemplates profit in proportion to the 

 service it renders the community, in proportion to the quan- 

 tity and the quality of the commodities put upon the market. 

 Such farming demands the highest operative skill, the keenest 

 scientific insight and the broadest outlook over the wants and the 

 welfare of the community. Many men on Massachusetts farms 

 to-day are doing exactly this kind of productive farming. They 

 have built up their ability through long years of experience. 

 They would be the best possible schoolmasters for their sons in 

 this skillful work, this scientific insight and this breadth of 

 outlook. 



But, just as the lawyer who must practice law is generally 

 unwilling to teach it, so the productive farmer, who must meet 

 the pressing demands of economic agricultural operations, and 

 who in most cases must be at once the skilled operative, the 

 scientific observer and the capable business manager, cannot 

 stop to teach his boy the many things he ought to be taught in 

 the years following his fourteenth birthday. 



If this is true of the farmer of exceptional ability, it is even 

 more evident among farmers in general throughout the Com- 



