30 THE farmer's education. 



accuses others, and is himself wholly mistaken in his premises; 

 for the men who are now employed in this work by the great 

 universities do understand their subjects. The part which the 

 farmer knows they assume, and do not waste time in talking 

 about. "Science" does not bother itself with teaching a 

 farmer how to hold his plow, or when to put in his crop, or 

 the time to harvest, or any other of the mechanical operations 

 of the farm. These are learned on the farm by practice. 

 What science does for the farmer is to discover and make 

 known to him things which he can not or is not likely to 

 discover for himself, but which, if he knows them, will enable 

 him to apply his labor to better profit. The foolish farmer is 

 the one who thinks he already knows all that is worth know- 

 ing, and refuses to learn more. When he competes with the 

 farmer who studies, he finds that his competitor is producing 

 more cheaply than he, and is underselling him, with the 

 result that, sooner or later, he goes to the wall, and his farm 

 passes to one who knows how to make better use of it. 



Briefly, therefore, the term "scientific farming" simply 

 means farming in the light of all the accurate information 

 obtainable from experience, observation, persons, or books. 

 It excludes farming on the basis of inaccurate or incomplete 

 information. It makes no difference where the information 

 comes from. A veterinary surgeon may never have been 

 out of a great city, and yet be able to give the farmer 

 essential information. The farmer must learn from the 

 entomologist, the chemist, the physicist, and others who can 

 teach him perfectly, although they never saw a plow. Per 

 contra, the unscientific farmer is one who attempts to carry 

 on the farm in the light of the trifling amount of infor 

 mation which one man can gather in a lifetime, and who 

 imagines that the experience of able men ceases to be valuable 

 when once it is written down in books. 



The object of science applied to agriculture is to reduce 

 cost of production. Science has cheapened, and is constantly 

 cheapening, all products which the farmer has to buy. Until 

 lately it has not, in America, been much applied to agricul- 

 ture. There are various reasons for this. For one tiling, 



