Vol. LXX. No. 4120. 
NEW YORK, OCTOBER 14, 1911. 
WEEKLY, $1.00 PER YEAR. 
FURTHER “ GRADUATE REFLECTIONS.” 
From a Man on the Farm. 
I was very much interested in “College Graduate’s” 
article on page 895, personally interested, because lie 
describes conditions that fit my own case so closely. 
When I was graduated from Cornell I not only had 
no capital, but was in debt for my education. So I 
took up a fair position in the U. S. Department of 
Agriculture, and began to drift along, longing for the 
beautiful country home, and the other things he de¬ 
scribes, but somehow the opportunity for acquiring 
them did not seem to turn up. Nevertheless, I kept 
on reading the back-to-the-land articles that are so 
common nowadays, and at last got up my courage 
sufficiently to cut loose from my “position” and rent 
a farm, which I have since bought. There is nothing 
very interesting to tell about my farming experiences, 
heels over head in debt, 
getting ahead a little 
here and there, but hard, 
uphill fighting all the 
way. 
Naturally, to one in 
my circumstances, any 
plan for raising funds 
has a very vital interest, 
but as I think of “Col¬ 
lege Graduate’s” plan, 
to set up college gradu- 
a t e s on “abandoned” 
farms and loan them 
money for a most mo¬ 
dern equipment, I can 
see that it would be 
radically wrong, both 
for the individual and 
for the State. He says 
that we were educated to 
the use of the best in 
machinery, stock and 
the like, and that our 
ideals were raised so 
that the conditions we 
used to tolerate no 
longer seem endurable. 
This is in a measure 
true, but I fear that 
“College Graduate” has 
come to look upon edu¬ 
cation as the end, rather 
than the means. Those 
who founded our insti¬ 
tutions of learning never intended that the student 
should pass directly from the commencement plat¬ 
form into the height of success and luxury. Education 
must train the student to overcome the difficulties 
and responsibilities of life work, rather than to jump 
straight over them. If our agricultural colleges are 
leading their students to despise the actual conditions 
of farm life, and to fear and dread the hard work 
and self-denial incident to successful farming, then 
they are failing most grievously to accomplish the 
work for which they were built. 
I think we all had our commencement dreams of 
happiness in love, and success in business; probably 
none of us has found his dreams to come out literally 
true, either in love or in business. “College Gradu¬ 
ate” says that “she must have the best,” yet it need 
not take all the romance out of life to work hand in 
hand through adversity. He says that he, likewise, 
must have a modern, sanitary barn, full of blue- 
blooded stock, yet it seems to me that one can begin 
with less, and still not give up hope that he can 
gradually work up to his ideal. 
“College Graduate” inquires whether the State’s 
obligation to the student should cease when the stu- 
detqt secures his diploma. Is not the obligation on 
the other side? One of my neighbors is a young 
man, struggling, like myself, to pay for his farm and 
his home. He has not had the advantage, as I have, 
of a college education, but he is just as intelligent, 
just as industrious, just as honest, just as good a citi¬ 
zen. Having already expended quite a sum for my 
education, should not the State assist my neighbor, 
rather than me? As a matter of fact, the State can¬ 
not work out his destiny, nor mine. It can help us 
much in the way of instruction and advice, and with¬ 
out doubt it might in some way give some financial 
aid to worthy farmers, but it cannot build a paved 
and electrically lighted road, to success for the ex¬ 
clusive use of college graduates. We ourselves must 
make the struggle, and win or lose, according to our 
merits. 
“College Graduate” argues that if the State would 
but set up our agricultural graduates on the “aban¬ 
doned farms” the very best of agriculturists would 
be kept at home; that agriculture would be greatly 
advanced and elevated in these communities, and 
that these educated agriculturists would soon be the 
maximum economic producers. I fear that when re¬ 
duced to actual practice his arguments would be 
found lame. Agricultural education is a fine thing, 
but there are a lot of difficulties and perplexities in 
actual farm management that never found their way 
into the text-books. Our best farmers are the ones 
who have worked their way through failures as well 
as successes, who are not afraid to receive the hard 
knocks of experience. Theory is good, but it takes a 
lot of common sense and perseverance to make it fit 
the crooked ways of actual practice. As to “elevat¬ 
ing” the communities in which these graduates locate, 
the man who works shoulder to shoulder with his 
fellow farmer, and on a level with them, will be in a 
better position to uplift them than the one who is set 
up on a lofty pedestal and bottle-fed by the State. I 
doubt, too, if most of these “educated agriculturists” 
would very soon become maximum economic pro¬ 
ducers. In the first place it takes a pretty thorough 
and systematic organization of things to bring even 
a well-kept farm to maximum production, let alone a 
run-down “abandoned farm.” In the second place, 
there is nothing like the spur of pressing necessity to 
make a man get the most possible out of his farm. 
I realize, all too painfully at times-, the handicap of 
insufficient capital, yet I do not believe it would be 
wise for the State, nor kind to me, even, to set me 
up with a complete and modern outfit of machinery, 
purebred stock, and fine buildings. I fear it would 
take me longer to pay 
for it than it would to 
work up from the bot¬ 
tom, and would not be 
as satisfactory, either. 
If “College Graduate” 
has not 'the courage and 
energy to face the hard¬ 
ship of “going it- alone,” 
neither would he be 
likely to have enough of 
those qualities to make 
a financial success, even 
with the help he sug¬ 
gests. He deplores the 
lack o f responsibility 
and the small opportun¬ 
ity for individual effort 
in working for another, 
yet he wants all the ob¬ 
stacles and difficulties 
removed when he starts 
out for himself. If for 
the sake of working out 
his own future he is not 
willing to forego, in 
some measure, the ease 
of short hours, the so¬ 
cial advantages and the 
modern conveniences, 
then most certainly 
would he better stick to 
his position. 
CHESTER L. MILLS. 
Allegheny Co., N. Y. 
R. N.-Y.—That last paragraph touches on the core 
of the whole question of education in school or col¬ 
lege. 
A COMPARISON OF HENS AND COWS. 
A friend of mine, who is a “cow man,” and myself 
have compared accounts. The results may throw 
some light on the reason why you could get no one 
to take up Mr. Dougan’s challenge for a “cow and 
hen” contest. The following figures are not high; 
in any case they are the figures. The production 
was real in both cases. In the case of the cow it 
is one-twentieth part of tlie whole account kept by 
my friend in his dairy of 20 purebred Guernsey 
cows. In the case of the hens, the figures are taken 
from a year’s account of the four pens referred to. 
The cows averaged 7978 pounds of milk, testing 
4.42 per cent, and containing 3S2]/ 2 pounds butter fat. 
The milk, butter, etc., sold from the 20 cows aver¬ 
aged $121.80 per cow. The average cost of feed per 
