40 THE FARMERS EDUCATION. 



say this of all separate Agricultural Colleges, but this is the 

 tendency. An Agricultural College attached to a strong Uni- 

 versity does not liave to maintain professors of botany, mathe- 

 matics, chemistry, physics, languages, and the like, which are 

 part of the equipment of all great Universities, but can expend 

 all its means in the applications of those sciences to agriculture. 

 Higher education is a very costly thing. Mechanics includes 

 machinery, and can not be taught without machinery, and 

 the maintenance of the necessary engineering })lant is too 

 great a strain upon the resources of most of the separate 

 Agricultural Colleges. The inevitable result is that many 

 students are drawn from the colleges of their own states to 

 the larger and better-equipped institutions of other states. 

 In most cases, whether the colleges are separate or included 

 in the State University, they receive aid from the treasury ol 

 the state. A great University requires an income of at least 

 $1,000 per day, with a tendency to increase. A first-rate 

 Agricultural College alone will need at least $500 per day. 

 It is not believed that any of our strictly Agricultural and 

 Mechanical Colleges have anything like this income, but a 

 first-rate Agricultural College can be maintained in connection 

 with a great University upon an income of from $200 to $300 

 per day. 



The proper office of the Agricultural College is not well 

 understood. The popular impression of it is as a place where 

 young persons are educated to become farmers. This impres- 

 sion is wholly erroneous. Such was never the intention of 

 an Agricultural College, nor is any such function possible to it. 

 We can not afford to spend years in learning one trade, only 

 to forsake it and practise another. Nor is it done. Those who 

 have been sent to Agricultural Colleges with the expectation 

 of becoming farmers have almost invariably ended by being 

 something else. This has led to the common complaint that 

 Agricultural Colleges "educate tlie boys away from the farm." 

 Of course they do. That is what they are for.* The error is 



*This must not be misunderstood. The meaning is that a full graduate 

 from a first-class Agricultural College is equipped for something different from 

 manual labor— not "better," but " different. " The farm worker is helped bj- 

 the "shorter," or "special" courses. Sec chapter 4 of tliis book. 



