PROGRAM OF RECONSTRUCTION 245 



abundant faith in education as a solvent of his diffi- 

 culties, and he demands that agricultural education shall 

 not only be completely democratized and adapted to the 

 last man on the land, but that it shall be as broad in its 

 content as the entire range of the rural problem. 

 There should be in the early future a very large in- 

 crease in the number of agricultural schools. Even- 

 tually, these schools, meeting the needs of boys from 

 14 to 1 8 years of age and designed chiefly as finishing 

 schools, must be relied upon to furnish the big majority 

 of school-trained farmers. The control or regulatory 

 tasks in agricultural enterprises carried on by the state 

 should be more carefully separated from its educa- 

 tional work. The agricultural colleges cannot fulfill 

 their true mission to American farmers unless they seek 

 and secure a vast enlargement of both their investiga- 

 tional and teaching work in the realms of the economic 

 and social problems of agriculture. The present di- 

 vided administrative responsibilities for schemes of 

 agricultural education should be coordinated in some 

 fashion, so that we may have a truly national system of 

 agricultural education. At present the United States 

 Department of Agriculture, the Bureau of Education, 

 the federal and state boards of vocational education, 

 the agricultural colleges, state commissioners or boards 

 of education, county farm bureaus, local public school 

 authorities, and in some cases independent agricultural 

 schools, are all involved in managing educational en- 

 terprises on behalf of agriculture. They should be 

 brought into the closest cooperation. The system as 

 a unit must make its utmost contribution to the solution 

 of all phases of the rural problem. It must do all that 

 education can do for the farmer. A great degree of 

 centralization is necessary with regard to a large gen- 



