PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS ? CONVENTION. 75 



Some of you have had general college training, some an agricultural 

 college training, while probably the majority have had neither. The 

 general college training has helped you to solve your problems because 

 of the strengthening of mental processes. The agricultural college has 

 done this, too, and has further given definite instructions as to pro- 

 cedure under certain conditions and has been more helpful accordingly. 



For the information which the college gives boiled down, running 

 over, in real scriptural measure, the majority of farmers have sought 

 in the agricultural press, experiment station bulletins, books, farmers' 

 institutes, reading courses, conventions, and farmers' clubs. The large 

 portion of this fund of knowledge has come from the experiment sta- 

 tions of our own and other states, or from field and laboratory investi- 

 gations carried on by other public bodies such as the State Commission 

 of Horticulture. The experiment stations have made good teaching in 

 the agricultural colleges possible and have given them a greater impe- 

 tus and a greater means for usefulness than could or has come from any 

 other source. The means for instruction above mentioned are all good 

 and all are recognized throughout the land as imperative in awakening 

 a livelier interest in our occupation and in creating a desire for further 

 and more scientific knowledge, as well as satisfying to a degree this 

 desire. 



If you have not had the opportunity to attend an agricultural school, 

 but have been dependent for the wide training needed upon the means 

 of home study, do you wish your sons and daughters to enter your 

 occupation with the same tools, or will you have them better equipped 

 through a regular course of study especially planned for their needs? 

 I am confident that every father and mother says, "I want my children 

 to have a better education than I had." I remember well my father's 

 repeated statement to this effect and how hard he worked to accomplish 

 the end. You want your sons who are to be farmers to study the 

 sciences and the practices relating to the farm, to the end that they 

 may become more interested therein and be able to compel the soil 

 to yield ever-increasing returns. You want your daughters to study 

 the sciences and approved practices relating to the home and thereby 

 become better home-makers. 



I am not so sure, however, that you all want your sons to go up to 

 the agricultural college. On the contrary, I imagine you. have an idea 

 that the college should come closer to you with its fund of knowledge 

 and store of wisdom. It may not be that you have evolved a scheme 

 satisfactory to yourselves as to just how this closer meeting is to take 

 place, but there is the strong desire which can not be evaded. Is not 

 the trouble here ? The college presupposes a high school course of four 

 years, the latter giving no attention to agricultural subjects, and follow- 

 ing eight years of grammar school in which agriculture is not mentioned. 

 It is not apparent to you why the boy who expects to spend his life 



