752 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 959 



tion. Any other condition suggests the ad- 

 visability of caution. Dr. Pritchett in his 

 letter to the Iowa Board of Education speaks 

 with a freedom and confidence suggesting the 

 most intimate acquaintance possible with the 

 ideals, the strength and the attainments of 

 colleges of agriculture. The prescription 

 which he gives appears within itself to follow 

 the most searching and conclusive diagnosis. 



Dr. Pritchett's diagnosis consists of two 

 main parts: first, agricultural education, at 

 least for Iowa, should be of a trade school 

 standard and type; and second, agricultural 

 education must be isolated from other lines, 

 particularly from engineering. 



Eegarding the first of these specifications 

 Dr. Pritchett says: 



The school of agriculture ought to teach pre- 

 eminently the trade of farming, even though it 

 does research in its experimental station, and con- 

 ducts certain classes of high order, its primary 

 function ought to be not the training of agricul- 

 tural teachers, but the training of farmers, and 

 the cultivation of the means by which the scien- 

 tific knowledge in a practical form can be put into 

 the hands of farmers. The great part of the work 

 is not on a professional plane. Students of agri- 

 culture ought not to be required to comply with 

 the same academic standards as those who expect 

 to enter the profession of engineering. ... In my 

 judgment the interests of agriculture will be sub- 

 served by making the agricultural college a 

 straight-out school of agriculture, with entrance 

 requirements suited to the needs of those who wish 

 to become practical farmers. I should not make 

 these academic requirements for admission higher 

 than the equipment afforded by the elementary 

 schools. 



This at least has the merit of being explicit. 

 Dr. Pritchett would take the boy at the same 

 stage of development required for entrance 

 into the freshman year of the high school, and 

 after getting him into this so-called college 

 would teach him how to farm. The objections 

 to this academic program are many, but pos- 

 sibly an illustration may serve the purpose. 

 A man concerned in educational matters in 

 Tennessee had been converted to the agricul- 

 tural point of view. He made no such mis- 

 take as to go to the people with messages of 



chemistry, botany or zoology, but on the con- 

 trary advocated eminently practical measures. 

 At a meeting up in the hill country he made 

 an address in which he labored long and ardu- 

 ously to prove to the audience that every boy, 

 and every girl, should know how to milk a 

 cow, and to this end should attend an agricul- 

 tural college. After wearing himself and the 

 audience pretty well out he threw the meeting 

 open for remarks and discussion. After a 

 painful silence, a gaunt old man with hay- 

 colored whiskers, the principal of a theological 

 seminary, arose. " Stranger," said he, " I 

 agree with you that every boy, black or white, 

 should know how to milk a cow. I even agree 

 that every girl should include this art along 

 with her other accomplishments. However, I 

 want to make this suggestion: Wouldn't it be 

 a good thing for a college to teach its students 

 something that a calf couldn't beat 'em at?" 



If the farmers send their sons to the agri- 

 cultural college in order that they may learn 

 how to farm there are going to be a lot of 

 disappointed farmers. At Wheaton, Illinois, 

 plowing matches are held each fall and men 

 who never saw a college do plowing so nearly 

 perfectly that only those experienced in the ac- 

 complishment are able to act as judges. This 

 skill could be learned at college, no doubt, but 

 why run a college for teaching an art which 

 can be learned readily in connection with 

 farming operations? The college could no 

 doubt develop great proficiency in the art of 

 husking corn, but it is doubtful whether it 

 could out-do boys who never so much as fin- 

 ished the country school. There are hundreds 

 of men in Iowa who can feed cattle so suc- 

 cessfully that few colleges would care to com- 

 pete with them in the results to be obtained 

 as judged in dollars. 



What the farmer should, and does, demand 

 of the college is a solution of the problems 

 which are too intricate for him to solve for 

 himself. The farmer can put fat onto steers 

 about as rapidly as can a college professor, but 

 he can not analyze feeds. Neither can the 

 farmer analyze his soils or identify the pests 

 that infect his crops. Should the college 



