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C. F. Curtiss, of Iowa. I believe that in our agricultural work we are tending 
strongly toward training the fanner the same as we do the engineer. Wo are 
loading our courses of study up with more and more technical work every year. 
We are going to be very soon on practically the same basis. It is true we have 
not had that heretofore; we were not in position to get it; we did not have the 
technical men in our faculty. The conditions are getting to be such that the 
young farmer is going to be obliged more and more largely each year to sell his 
services on the market, just as the young engineer does. I think less than 50 
per cent of our agricultural students are in such circumstances that they can 
return to farms of their own proprietorship, or likely to come to them by inher- 
itance. There is going to be an increasing demand for the young men who have 
had the thorough technical and practical training which renders them capable 
of taking charge of a farm, as an engineer takes charge of a plant, and making 
it a profitable investment for the owner. The demand is more largely for thor- 
ough training in agriculture. And I believe we are going to load up our courses 
(and some of the institutions have already encountered the difficulty) so fully 
with agriculture that there will not be room for mathematics, science, and the 
culture studies. These studies are giving way and must give way more largely 
in the future than they have in the past to technical agricultural studies. 
Mr. Bailey. To all requests for men to take charge of large agricultural 
enterprises I always reply that we can not send recent college graduates to fill 
such positions. That is not the way the agricultural student is trained The 
engineering enterprises are organized enterprises. The young man goes to do a 
special piece of work under direction, whereas the agricultural student who 
takes charge of a 250-acre orchard, for example, not only has to direct the 
technical work of spraying, etc., but he has to do with the management of 
men and other executive details, and that demands experience. The engineer 
who is the manager of men is the one who has been out of college two or three 
years, and therefore has had experience in the management of men. 
I sometimes wonder, when we are splitting up our agricultural courses into 
small units, whether we are not overloading them with very minute divisions 
of subjects and are not likely to substitute training for education, mere tech- 
nical, manual, and special skill for real mental power. 
So far as we have organized industries in agriculture, as we have in engineer- 
ing, I think the educational demands are parallel to a large extent, and the 
experience of the engineer is useful to us. So long as the larger part of the 
subject of agriculture is unorganized, I do not see how we can adopt the kind 
of training the engineer receives. I suppose, as time goes on, we shall find 
increasing demand for particular and technical special lines of training for the 
agricultural man. 
J. L. Snyder, of Michigan. The inference which could be drawn from the 
remarks made might lead one to think that the engineering courses were almost 
entirely technical and that our agricultural courses were at least half liberal 
or included subjects that would give discipline. We all know that our engineer- 
ing courses are exceedingly strong in mathematics, and we also know that the 
disciplinary value of mathematics is very great. In addition to that, engineer- 
ing students must have a good knowledge of English. If they do not have it 
when they enter the school, they must get it afterwards. Engineering gradu- 
ates are well trained in English. They must also have considerable science 
work. On the whole, our engineering courses give very good disciplinary train- 
ing. On the other hand, if we make our courses in agriculture thoroughly 
technical, we lose the disciplinary ^alue that is attached to the courses of 
engineering. If we divide up our courses in agriculture as finely as some have 
recommended, I think that to a large extent the disciplinary value will be lost, 
