THE NEW AGRICULTURE 
213 
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. 
