FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
9 
til all are equal to the best. We are not 
on the right footing when public schools 
in one part of the State are good and in 
another poor. 
There is another phase of this ques¬ 
tion which is also worthy of our atten¬ 
tion. The better the condition of our 
public schools and the more pupils who 
make their way through them, increased 
in numbers by compulsory education if 
you will, the, greater the demand upon our 
institutions of higher learning. 
The first of these demands is a demand 
for trained teachers to take charge of el¬ 
ementary school work. At the present 
time Florida is drawing very largely upon 
other states for her teaching forces. In 
schools of first rank in the State, it is, 
perhaps, not too much to say that eighty- 
five to ninety per cent of our teachers 
come from and receive their training in 
other states. Fortunate we are that they 
can be secured, but methinks the State in 
a larger measure should be meeting its 
own requirements. Sometimes it is an 
advantage that teachers should have been 
trained in something of the State’s tradi¬ 
tions, something of its viewpoint, some¬ 
thing of its necessities, something of its 
own peculiar problems. 
Upon our institutions of higher learn¬ 
ing there is also a demand for increased 
facilities to care for larger student bodies 
and it is to this latter phase of the ques¬ 
tion that I now desire to call your atten¬ 
tion. Never in the history of our coun¬ 
try was there so great a demand for 
trained men and women as there is now. 
If the war taught us anything, it taught 
us the need of training. We realize, of 
course, that training is not an end, it is 
but the means to an end. The trained 
man can go more swiftly and certainly 
to his object than the untrained. 
The development of our State most 
certainly lies along agricultural lines. We 
cannot hope to reach that' development 
which our resources make possible with¬ 
out trained men and women to take up 
the work. Training and knowledge they 
must have or fail. These they must get, 
either in the school of experience at their 
own or someone else’s expense, a slow 
method at best; or they may get it at a 
well equipped school. To meet our agri¬ 
cultural requirements this training can be 
secured nowhere else than in Florida. 
Our conditions are peculiar, not dupli¬ 
cated elsewhere. Our crops, our soils, 
our climate, our entire environment are 
all different, or our problems are differ¬ 
ent in their handling from what they may 
be elsewhere. Unless the tiller of the 
soil brings to his work, a knowledge of 
applied Florida agriculture his chances of 
success are, to say the least, greatly re¬ 
duced. 
Many failures have been made in Flor¬ 
ida, in this you will agree, though gener¬ 
ally we magnify our successes and min¬ 
imize our failures. Most of these fail¬ 
ures have been due to lack of knowledge. 
If our State, is to grow and develop, we 
must have men trained in the many dif¬ 
ferent branches of Florida horticulture 
and agriculture, and this training cannot 
be done so well elsewhere as in Florida. 
A man may follow the vocation of farm¬ 
ing in North Carolina, and take it up with 
equal facility and with equal chances of 
success, but not so in Florida. We must 
have men trained to work with Florida 
