THE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES. 43 



and dig out what tliey need from time to time as they need it. 

 It is evidently a waste of effort to devote time and money to 

 learning how to imperfectly read what one will never see, 

 when it is certain that the imperfect knowledge acquired will 

 vanish in a year or two without constant use. 



The time required to become a graduate of a first-class 

 Agricultural College is seven or eight years, of which three or 

 four are spent in preparatory work, and four in the college. 

 The cost can not well be less than $300 per year, or $2,400, 

 besides eight years of time. This sum, and time, after deduct- 

 ing the cost of a reasonable and well-directed education after 

 leaving the common schools, would go far to buy and stock a 

 small farm. If applied entirely to an education, it should be 

 considered a capital sufficient to assure its possessor a means 

 of livelihood for his life without the additional expense of 

 buying a farm. 



It should be plain, then, that the Agricultural College is an 

 essential factor in assuring agricultural prosperity, but that its 

 graduates are not necessarily to be working farmers. I do not 

 say that the working farmer will not be the better for a 

 complete education, provided he will work on his farm, but 

 after spending time and money to fit himself for other work, 

 he is not likely to do so and seldom does. A person, however, 

 who can not or will not work on his farm ought never to own 

 one. It is useless to know how to do things if we do not do 

 them, and if an agricultural education is worth anything, it 

 jQust qualify its possessor to do what the uneducated man can 

 not do. The educated farmer who does not work on his farm 

 may have the barren satisfaction of knowing somewhat more 

 definitely than others just w^here he loses money, but this 

 knowledge not followed up is hardly worth the cost of it. 



The agricultural graduate is a professional man, who will 

 usually, like the doctor, the lawyer, and the engineer, gain a 

 living by the sale of his professional knowledge. There is no 

 more need, and need be no more intent, that the graduate in 

 agriculture should own a farm than that a mechanical engi- 

 neer should own a factory. He is equipped to give professional 

 advice, and, if desired, superintendence. Until lately there 



