94 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



dollars, and that the annual expense would be six thousand and 

 two hundred dollars. By these arrangements and expenditures 

 he contemplates the education of one hundred students who 

 are to pay annually each for tuition the sum of forty dollars. 

 It was also proposed to connect an agricultural department with 

 several of the existing academies at an annual expense of three 

 thousand dollars more. These estimates of cost seem low, nor 

 do I find in this particular any special • objection to the recom- 

 mendation made by the commissioners of the government ; any 

 other scheme is likely to be quite as expensive in the end. 



My cliief objection is, that his plan is not comprehensive 

 enough, and cannot, in a reasonable time, sensibly affect the 

 average standard of agricultural learning among us. The 

 graduation of fifty students a year would be equal to one in a 

 thousand or fifteen hundred of the farmers of the State ; and 

 in ten years there would not be one professionally educated 

 farmer in a hundred. We are not, of course, to overlook the 

 indirect influence of such a school, through its students annually 

 sent forth. The better modes of culture adopted by them would, 

 to some extent, be copied by others ; nor are we to overlook the 

 probability of a prejudice against the institution and its gradu- 

 ates, growing out of the republican ideas of equality prevailing 

 among us. But the struggle against mere prejudice would be 

 an honorable struggle, if, in the hour of victory, the college 

 could claim to have reformed and elevated materially the prac- 

 tices and ideas of the farmers of the country. I fear that even 

 victory under such circumstances would not be complete suc- 

 cess. An institution established in New England must look to 

 the existing peculiarities of our country, rather than venture at 

 once upon the adoption of scliemes that may have Ijeen success- 

 ful elsewhere. Here every farmer is a laborer himself, employ- 

 ing usually from one to three hands, and they are often persons 

 who look to the purchase and cultivation of a farm on their own 

 account ; while in England the master farmer is an overseer 

 rather than a laborer. The number of men in Europe who own 

 land or work it on their own account is small ; the number of 

 laborers, whose labors are directed by the proprietors and farm- 

 ers, is quite large. Under these circumstances, if the few are 

 educated, the work will go successfully on ; while here, our 

 agricultural education ought to reach the great body of those 



