PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 81 



thing a farm of this sort can do is to teach the young people how to 

 produce with a profit, and it seems to me the best way to teach them that 

 is to do the actual thing right there on the State farm. If you are 

 bringing soil from Kansas, if you are experimenting in expensive ways, 

 of course the thing can not be done; but simply to run it as a model 

 California farm I still maintain the farm should pay expenses, because 

 if those who best know how can not run a farm so as to make a profit, 

 how can their students do so? 



MR. MILLS. Wouldn't it be better for the State to set aside a piece 

 of ground as a model farm? 



MR. BERWICK. I assumed this was a model farm. If I am wrong 

 I beg pardon, but I regarded this to be the model farm of the State to 

 show our young people how to farm with profit. It is not analogous to 

 the chemical laboratory. 



PROFESSOR WICKSON. Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : I 

 appreciate the fact that there is not ample time for the full discussion of 

 the important issue Mr. Berwick has raised. I want to quote something 

 which Mr. Pillsbury just whispered to me, which is perhaps better than 

 anything I can think of in a minute, and that is that the farm was 

 intended to be made for the students and not the students for the farm ; 

 and I take it the significance of that is that the farm is to be used to 

 teach the students to do something and not use the students in order 

 that the farm may be profitable. Of course, there is something in that 

 point. Now, there is another consideration that is near to it, and that 

 is that a model farm has been a failure ever since the first one was 

 thought of, and if that farm at Davisville is to be a model farm we 

 should be the first to ask the State to take it back. We can not use it 

 in that way. It is not possible to proceed along the line of successful 

 operation by skillful men and have your students sitting around on the 

 fence smoking cigarettes and watch you doing things. You have to 

 teach those students to do things themselves. Now, that requires a 

 teaching force, in the first place. The man who does a thing success- 

 fully can not always tell why he does it, nor is the mere observer able 

 to take the lesson entirely by observation. He has to be told something 

 -about it. That brings in a teaching force. You can not make a farm 

 of that sort profitable unless prices should be inordinately high, because 

 a teaching force is no part of the expense of a commercial farm ; it is 

 a part, and an essential part, of the teaching. 



Now, we will have to acknowledge at the very outset that we can not 

 teach those boys how to farm successfully by having them stand around 

 and see other people do things. We have got to show them how to do 

 things themselves, and they are going to make a terrible mess of it. 

 Professor Henry said he would never dare in his life to tell the Legis- 



6— FGC 



