B86 



SCIENCE. 



[X. S. Vol. XVIII. No. 465. 



to town or city high schools where agricul- 

 ture is entirely neglected. They should be 

 provided with schools similar to the manual 

 training high schools maintained in many 

 of our cities, in which, along with culture 

 •and scientific studies, the theory and prae- 

 iiee of agriculture shall be systematically 

 iaught. 



It may, perhaps, be said that this is a 

 large and expensive program. But agri- 

 culture is making no unreasonable de- 

 mands. She is asking only the same treat- 

 ment which is already accorded other arts 

 N and professions. The clergymen, lawyers 

 and doctors receive their education very 

 largely at public expense. Schools of 

 technology and courses of maniial training 

 are being rapidly multiplied as parts of our 

 public school system. The city schools in 

 ever-increasing measure directly prepare 

 their pupils for the pursuits of urban com- 

 munities. The farmer is not to be deprived 

 of similar privileges along the lines of his 

 art. The republic can not afford to main- 

 tain the great fundamental industry of 

 agriculture on the basis of ignorance and 

 conservatism. Reckoned at their lowest 

 value, the public funds spent in technical 

 education, whether in engineering, trades 

 or agriculture, are a most profitable finan- 

 eial investment. But they pay vastly 

 richer returns in the broader mental out- 

 look and higher morality of the educated 

 masses. 



While acknowledging all this as regards 

 the agriculture of the United States as a 

 whole, some people have had the idea that 

 the- agriculture of New England is grad- 

 ually disappearing and will ultimately be 

 extinct. A most absurd idea! The agri- 

 culture of New England has undergone 

 great changes in the past half century. It 

 has passed through a period of depression 

 while the great Mississippi Valley was be- 

 ing occupied and its vast prairies were 

 almost as free as air to the settler. But 



that day is gone, for the lands of the Mis- 

 sissippi Valley are filled with farmers. 

 Irrigation will ultimately put under the 

 plow millions of acres west of the great 

 river, but this development will necessarily 

 be slow and expensive even with national 

 aid. The natural increase of population, 

 the great tide of immigration, the growing 

 demands of the old world for food to stop 

 the hunger of its teeming millions — all 

 these things are to make our agriculture 

 more remunerative and to bring into more 

 profitable use the lands of New England, 

 as well as of the rest of the country. Ac- 

 cording to the United States census, in the 

 period between 1890 and 1900 the annual 

 value of the farm products of New Hamp- 

 shire increased from less than thirteen to 

 nearly twenty-two millions of dollars. 



And even now, and in the daj's to come 

 in far greater measure, it is the trained 

 farmer who will make the best living out 

 of New England soils. For here will 

 floiirish an intensive and highly specialized 

 agriculture. The forests are to be recon- 

 structed and profitably i;tilized as a perma- 

 nent source of wealth. Horticulture, dairy- 

 ing and poultry raising — pursuits which 

 call for a rare combination of scientific 

 knowledge and practical skill for their most 

 profitable development — are to make the 

 restricted fields of New England far more 

 productive than many broader areas be- 

 yond the Alleghenies. But these highly 

 specialized and developed agricultural in- 

 dustries must rest on a basis of scientific 

 and technical education if they are to have 

 great and enduring success. To bring this 

 about is the mission of the agricultural 

 college. It is a great task and a tremen- 

 dous responsibility. In the older lines of 

 education the college has a quite restricted 

 duty and the methods of its work are rela- 

 tively fixed, so that its managers and fac- 

 ulty have a comparatively easy burden to 

 bear. Btit the managers and faculty of an 



