THE NEW AGRICULTURE 21 3 



there is a difference : in agriculture the army marches not 

 to possible destruction but to actual production. In it have 

 enlisted the soldiers of the soil. To-day this thought is tak- 

 ing visible form. It is the birth of a new agriculture. We 

 are already seeing what has well been called the Agricultural 

 Renaissance. 



The hope of the new agriculture centers, as we have seen, 

 in the children. They bring to school natures courageous and 

 unspoiled. The germ of the scientific spirit within them is 

 surely active enough ; it lies in their everlasting curiosity. 

 Confidence in comrades is at its highest. The social instincts 

 of childhood, also, are irrepressible. Beginning with short 

 and easy steps, it is for the educator to develop these precious 

 impulses in children to fuller and larger conceptions of ad- 

 venture, of leadership, and of solidarity. As they grow older 

 and enter practical life, they seize upon cooperative ways and 

 means with such zest as only young people can show who 

 have tried team play in their studies. For they know — they 

 have learned without any telling — that a self-organized team 

 is the best dynamo ever invented for getting things done. 

 They realize the supreme happiness of working together. 

 They know, besides, that through mutual aid the strength of 

 each, be he weak or strong, is the strength of all. If not 

 taken in too narrow a sense, competition might be called the 

 tug of war. Cooperation, then, is the tug of peace. 



The equipment demanded by a youngster of ambition and 

 aspiration now becomes clear. He must be trained from the 

 beginning and throughout his entire school life in the methods 

 of both science and cooperation, so that he may develop the 

 power of controlling natural forces and of leading men. 

 Loyalty, leadership, science, are the three vital qualities that 

 insure his success. Gardening, then, worked out at school 

 after some such plan as has been sketched in these pages, 



