^Agricultural Education. 1 19 
hold their proper rank and station, and to exercise that influence 
in the counsels of our state and nation, which rightfully belong to 
thera, let us qualify them by giving them sufficient education. It 
is not strictly necessary that we put them through college. If our 
common schools are made what they should be, and we send our 
sons, after they leave them, up to the academy during the winter, 
we can keep them at work on the farm during summer; and still, 
by the time they are twenty-one years of age, can prepare thera 
(if they possess the requisite talent,) to hold any station with 
credit to themselves, and advantage to the state or nation. 
There is no occupation in which men are so poorly paid for the 
same amount of human labor, as that of farming. But perhaps 
the political economist will say, that there has been less capital 
expended in educating and preparing him to perform the labor, 
calculating closely the amount of money, and the worth in dollars 
and cents of the time spent in the preparation to commence their 
labor. But that is the very thing we complain of. It is not the 
mere physical labor of the farmer only that we want, as he is en- 
titled to all the rights and privileges enjoyed by all others; we 
wish to see him sufficiently educated to exercise and enjoy those 
rights equally with them. One reason why slave labor is cheaper 
than free white labor is, that it does not cost the master or owner 
as much to grow and prepare him to perform the labor, as it does 
the free white man to prepare himself with the limited education 
he now has. The less there is expended in educating and pre- 
paring the laboring man, the less pay will he receive. The na- 
tural tendency of poor and cheap education in the laboring classes, 
is to degrade human labor; and the less will be performed by in- 
telligent men, which would have a bad effect upon the farming 
community. If our labor cost those who hire more, we should 
lose nothing by it, as skillful and well-directed labor would be 
worth the more ; and there seems to be no good reason why those 
who produce the food on which all others subsist, should work for 
less than others do. Let us then introduce the study of agricul- 
ture into our primary schools, as the best means of improving the 
condition of the great mass of laboring farmers. The young ac- 
tive mind needs variety to feed upon, this in addition to the stu- 
dies now pursued would afford the variety. The mind would be 
led to the study of the principles of nature, as developed in the 
growth of vegetables and animals, which would create a habit of 
reasoning from cause to effect, equally necessary to the farmer and 
the citizen. It would improve our common schools, and give 
them an upward tendency. It would give to the rising generation 
of farmers a character and standing equal with those who follow 
other pursuits, which they have not as a class heretofore possessed; 
and that is what we want. It would reach that great middling 
