PROCEEDINGS OP THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 



79 



DISCUSSION ON STATE FARM AT DAVIS. 



THE CHAIRMAN. Discussion on this paper is now in order. 



MR. MILLS. I would like to ask the gentleman what the qualifica- 

 tions are for entrance to the new school at Davis. 



PROFESSOR ANDERSON. No definite plans have been made as yet. 

 For the short course there will be no requirements whatever; anybody 

 can enter; and that is especially for adults, men who are already in some 

 branch of farming and want to learn more about what is being done in 

 the experimental field. The secondary school work is usually carried 

 on after the grammar school. For instance, at San Luis Obispo we 

 admit students who have finished the grammar schools and are fifteen 

 years of age. I have not taken up the work yet and I really ought not 

 to say very much about it, but I think that is the coming thing in our 

 agricultural instruction to-day. It has proven to be most successful in 

 states where it is tried, and our four years' experience at San Luis 

 Obispo shows that it is the proper thing to do. 



MR. BERWICK. Mr. Anderson, some of us think it would be a 

 better object lesson if that farm could be made self-sustaining or even 

 profitable. It is so easy to run a farm with a great expenditure of 

 money, but it is so hard to run a farm and make the money out of the 

 farm. Could you make that farm self-sustaining? 



PROFESSOR ANDERSON. How do you mean? 



MR. BERWICK. It would be a better object lesson for a model farm 

 to pay its own way out of the farm. Is it possible, do you think, in any 

 way to do that? 



PROFESSOR ANDERSON. No; it is not. 



MR. BERWICK. And for what reason? 



PROFESSOR ANDERSON. In asking that you are asking some- 

 thing which you do not ask of any other school. You have a carpenter 

 shop to teach boys carpentry; you don't ask for that to be self- 

 supporting. A machine shop; you don't ask for that to be self-supporting. 

 Where a school is located at a farm the farm must be looked upon as 

 the laboratory of the school, and, taken as a whole, can not be expected 

 to be any more self-supporting than a laboratory in the machine shop. 

 On the other hand, a field of oats, or a field of corn or rye, by themselves, 

 providing there isn't too much done in the way of experimentation, will 

 in themselves show a profit, or may show a loss. So we find on our 

 farms that certain crops grown in the practical way will show results. 

 But, taken as a whole, your farm can not be made self-supporting, and 

 there is no college or school in the United States making it so, so far as 

 I know. The dairy itself will show good returns, but the State will 

 always have to make appropriations for the farm laboratory. 



MR. BERWICK. I don't think the thing is quite analogous to a 



