112 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



neglected training for the manual vocations. Furthermore, we 

 have laid stress on the training of leaders ; we have not given enough 

 attention to the preparation of subordinates. We have attempted 

 to train men who are supposed to do mental work chiefly; we liaA'e 

 neglected to train people who are to intellectualize muscular work. 

 We have attempted to train generals; we have not trained captains. 

 We have made it possible for the few to find their niche in the world's 

 work; we have turned the mass of boys and girls loose to get along 

 as best they could in the struggle for existence. 



But now we have come to see that there is a supreme industrial 

 reason for training for vocation. We need to develop the maximum 

 skill of indi\'iduals in the interests of production, just as we need to 

 secure the maximum return from a machine or an acre of land. 

 We have learned also that sociologically there is a strong reason 

 for vocational training, hdng in the desirability of adjustment of the 

 individual function and ability to social progress. We need to 

 have each man doing the work for which he is best fitted and which 

 the world wants done. We must put the square pegs in the square 

 holes, both in the interest of the individual and of society. 



In our industrial problems heretofore agriculture has been 

 treated largely as a non-mental pursuit. It has been looked upon 

 as an art, an art with a low degree of skill, — "anyone can farm." 

 But we have reached the time when the abundance of scientific 

 knowledge about agriculture shows that this opinion is no longer 

 tenable. The depletion of soils, under our old system of agri- 

 culture which "anybody could follow," further emphasizes our 

 mistake. Furthermore, land was formerly given away and some 

 of it held by the inefficient ; now we are approaching a time of land 

 scarcity and a time when land can be held only by the efficient. 

 Consequently the need of a training for the vocation of agriculture 

 is forced upon our attention, and we find a great movement setting 

 in in which agriculture, as well as other industrial vocations, is 

 knocking at the doors of the schools. 



Before going further it would be well to signify that agriculture 

 as we use it implies a rather definite sort of thing. It is not chiefly 

 an art; it is a body of knowledge. While it may not perhaps be 

 justly called a science, such as chemistry, it is an applied science, 

 such as medicine. It has to do not primarily with practices, but 



