1912. 
4.1T 
LARGE PUBLIC QUESTIONS. 
[Editoh's Note. —Under tbis heading we 
intend to have discussed questions which 
particularly interest country people. We 
do not agree with all that our correspond¬ 
ents say, but we shall give men and women 
who possess the courage of conviction an 
opportunity to say what they think hbout 
certain things which interest country peo¬ 
ple.] 
GERMAN AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS. 
The Winter agricultural school in 
America is an unsolved problem. The 
different States are trying different 
methods. The agricultural colleges 
have established Winter courses, and 
in many of the States are holding ex¬ 
tension agricultural schools. All of 
these methods are accomplishing a great 
deal of good, and the only question in 
regard to them is whether they cannot 
be improved and what is now being 
done supplemented. For this reason 
it is a matter of interest to know what 
is_ being done in other countries and 
with what success. 
The Schools in Germany.— Ger¬ 
many is no novice in this matter. Their 
first Winter agricultural school was 
established in 1834, and at the present 
time there are over 200 such schools, 
with an attendance of between 7,000 
and 8,000 students. Their most rapid 
development, however, has been within 
the last 20 years, and at the present 
time the number of students attending 
them is growing rapidly and many new 
schools^ are being established every 
year. The schools are maintained for 
the farm boys who cannot be spared 
from the farm work during the Sum¬ 
mer months. They are usually five 
months in length, running from No¬ 
vember 1 to April 1, and the course 
consists of two years’ study. They 
are typical of the German’s love for 
thoroughness and are true schools in 
which the students are drilled daily in 
their lessons, as they would be in a 
high school. 
Different From Our Own.— In this 
respect they differ very much from 
most of the American Winter agricul¬ 
tural schools, which are principally 
lecture courses, and many of our so- 
called movable schools are simply pro¬ 
longed farmers’ institutes. The stu¬ 
dents are admitted when they are 15 
years of age and have completed the 
eight years that every German child 
is required to take in the public schools. 
The students are the sons of farmers 
and ^are preparing to go directly back 
to the farm. The schools are estab¬ 
lished to meet the local conditions of 
the particular region in which they are 
located, and the students come from a 
very limited area, usually not over 15 
to 20 miles distance. Organized in this 
way the conditions that all of the stu¬ 
dents are familiar with are fairly uni¬ 
form and the instruction can be made 
more specific. The schools are finish¬ 
ing schools for the students who at¬ 
tend them and it is the rare exception 
that any of them expect to go to any 
other school after finishing the Winter 
school. In comparing them to our own 
educational system these Winter schools 
take the place of the high school for 
the farni boys who attend them. 
A Typical School.— I can give the 
best idea of these schools by describ¬ 
ing one that I have visited recently 
which is typical of the system. It is 
in Wittenburg, the place made famous 
by Martin Luther, the reformer, in the 
sixteenth century. Wittenburg is now 
a place of about 20,000 inhabitants and 
surrounded by fairly good farm land. 
The Wittenburg school was established 
42 years ago, and has held regular ses¬ 
sions every year since its establishment. 
The fundamental thought in the organi¬ 
zation of these Winter schools is to 
make them local, and to serve the com¬ 
munity in which they are located. So 
in the Wittenburg school the students 
come from farms tljat are within a 
radius of 15 to 20 miles of Wittenburg. 
Dr. von Spillner, the director of the 
school, told me that he or his assistant 
had visited the homes of every one of 
the students, and knew personally their 
home conditions. The school is held 
in rather modest quarters, a two-story 
building that is rented, and the rooms 
that are used for the school consist 
of two recitation rooms, a large as¬ 
sembly room, a private laboratory and 
an office room for the teachers. The 
equipment is good and apparently well 
chosen for its purpose. The students, 
of which there are 83 this year, are 
sons of farmers, and for the most part 
come from what is termed here “the 
small farms.” Farmers in Germany 
are divided into three classes, accord- 
<THE RURAL 
ing to* the size of the farm they own, 
the small, medium and large, and the 
lines are sharply drawn between the 
three classes. The small farmer has 
only a few acres and does all of his 
own work with the aid of his family. 
The average age of the students in this 
school is about 17 years, and it is the 
rare exception that one of them does 
not go back to the farm when complet¬ 
ing the course. 
What They are Taught.— The sub¬ 
jects that are taught in the schools are 
divided into three classes: (1) Subjects 
that contribute to their general educa¬ 
tion, such as the study of their own 
language, arithmetic, elementary geome¬ 
try, simple surveying, leveling, and 
something ot political and physical 
geography. All of these subjects are 
taught with the one purpose, of ap¬ 
plying them to agriculture. For ex¬ 
ample, in their language study, readings 
and poems are chosen that concern 
agriculture. In one of the classes that 
I visited they repeated a beautiful poem 
about the plow and the farmer’s oc¬ 
cupation. In the arithmetic and geome¬ 
try the problems are taken from agri¬ 
culture, as is also the case in their study 
of surveying and leveling. 
(2) The second group of subjects 
they classify as the general sciences, 
i hese include very elementary courses 
in physics, chemistry, botany, and zo- 
ology. I he parts of these subjects are 
selected that can be most directly ap¬ 
plied and are most essential as a foun¬ 
dation to the strictly agricultural sub¬ 
jects. Experiments are made by the 
teachers before the classes in the dif¬ 
ferent sciences, and for this purpose 
the school has quite a complete outfit. 
(3) The third group of subjects are 
the strictly agricultural subjects. These 
include soil fertility, farm crops, breed¬ 
ing and feeding of live stock, farm 
management, horticulture and book¬ 
keeping. The instruction in these sub¬ 
jects is made just as personal as possi¬ 
ble and applied to local conditions. In 
the class in stock feeding that I at¬ 
tended, the students brought in a ra¬ 
tion for oxen (a great many oxen are 
used on the farms here) that they had 
prepared in which they were to use 
as little hay as possible, since hay is 
very scared and high in price here this 
year as well as in America. Their 
problem was to make up rations that 
were as near right as possible from 
the foods that^ were available on their 
own farms. Thus they were solving 
the problems they would meet as soon 
as they themselves went into farming, 
and so it was all through the different 
classes. The instruction was given 
with particular reference to the stud¬ 
ents’ home conditions. 
The Organization of the School.— 
Each school has a director, whi.ch as a 
rule is a permanent position with a 
fairly good salary. Dr. von Spillner 
has been director of the Wittenburg 
school for 16 years. In each school 
there is also a second teacher, or as¬ 
sistant director. This assistant must 
have passed the government examina¬ 
tion for agricultural teacher, which 
means he must have attended an agri¬ 
cultural college at least three years, 
and had one year in a teacher’s col¬ 
lege as well as two years of practical 
experience on an approved farm, as all 
of these things are required before a 
person is eligible for the teacher’s ex¬ 
amination. Other teachers are drawn 
from the local high schools for one or 
two hours per day to teach the general 
branches and some of the sciences. This 
arrangement seems to offer a possible 
solution of the difficulty of getting 
teachers for such schools in America. 
The problem always arises, where are 
teachers to be gotten for four or five 
months in the year, and what are they 
to do the rest of the year? By such 
an arrangement the schools get the 
benefit of old and experienced teachers 
at a minimum cost. The teachers I 
heard in the Wittenburg school were 
splendid and showed the results of their 
training arid experience. While the sys¬ 
tem as a whole may not apply to our 
own conditions, it at least may contain 
some suggestions to supplement and 
possibly replace our extension of agri¬ 
cultural schools. h. c. price. 
Halle a Saale, Germany. 
What Water System for Stable. —What 
water system would you advise for 35 head 
of cattle. 10 horses, 40 to 50 hogs and also 
for a house supply? Would you consider 
an air pressure system, for such needs as 
mentioned above, connected to a well lo¬ 
cat'd so as to use a minimum amount of 
pipe, superior to a gravity system by which 
the water is pumped from a well to a con¬ 
crete reservoir, on an elevation about 600 
or S00 feet away from buildings and well? 
We have dug a well about 400 feet from 
barn, but it seems to be failing, d. n\ a. 
Selins Grove. Pa. 
NEW-YORKER 
BIG MONEY MAKER 
Dairy farms grow richer 
every year. Wheat or 
other farms without cows 
grow poorer. That is 
finest homes, biggest crops and surest 
profits are found on dairy farms. 
Follow keen dairy farmers—the men who 
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Tubular Cream Separator 
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of Dexter, Me., and owner of the 
grand Holstein shown above, is 
but one of many such, too numerous 
to mention, who use Tubulars exclu¬ 
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, ... .Were L ' n Bie market for another separator, I 
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WEST CHESTER, PA. 
AH 
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