180 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
full measure, but also to protect the buyer 
from injurious insects and serious plant 
and animal diseases; for many of the buy¬ 
ers of the products of one State are them¬ 
selves growers of other products in other 
States. 
Undoubtedly the best social results are 
to come not so much from organizing for 
the purpose of meeting general social prob¬ 
lems and to undertake “reforms,” as to 
attack and to solve the actual practical 
difficulties as they arise. Whenever any 
community or State works effectively for 
the purpose of eliminating a crop pest, it 
receives thereby good schooling and it 
is easier to organize for more abstract 
problems. 
III. COMMUNITY ACTION IN EDUCATION 
The States have already come to act 
as units in respect to agricultural and hor¬ 
ticultural education. There is no national 
scheme of education in the United States. 
We have left the educational develop¬ 
ments to be worked out very largely by 
the different commonwealths. We have, 
to be sure, a Commissioner of Education, 
but this is not a centralized organization 
controlling the educational policies of the 
whole country. We really have forty- 
eight kinds of educational policy or edu¬ 
cational administration. Amongst them 
all, we ought to work out the best re¬ 
sults for all sorts and conditions of men. 
Possibly we could more quickly secure 
standardized results and more administra¬ 
tive “efficiency” if our educational poli¬ 
cies were all administered from a com¬ 
mon center; but we should lose in ex¬ 
perience, in adaptation of means to ends, 
and in allowing the people themselves to 
partake in their own way. 
But at this moment, I am interested in 
the fact that the States have come to act 
as units in education by means of agri¬ 
culture, each State making a somewhat 
different contribution and in its own way 
as its needs seem to require. They are 
maintaining this education in good part 
by State funds. This education is main¬ 
tained for the purpose of developing the 
economic resources of the State and chief¬ 
ly, as I think of it, to the end that they 
may develop a better people on the land. 
It is not enough to train for mere effi¬ 
ciency and skill in the different profes¬ 
sions, trades and occupations, but we must 
use all these agencies as the means of bet¬ 
ter personal development. 
Education by means of agriculture and 
horticulture does not replace or supplant 
other studies. It allows the persons en¬ 
gaged in these great occupations to have 
the privileges that naturally are theirs 
and the opportunity for their own best 
growth. Greek is not less important be¬ 
cause we have more agriculture; it ought 
to be more important. History, the clas¬ 
sics, mathematics and all the other con¬ 
ventional and traditional subjects are not 
less important but rather more important; 
as we can see that all the people are to be 
educated, so should there be more means 
of training and more avenues for useful¬ 
ness. Education by means of agriculture 
has special importance because the agri¬ 
cultural pursuits are at the basis of. our 
economic structure. We are giving these 
industrial pursuits their proper place when 
we allow the educational agencies grow¬ 
ing out of them to secure their full devel- 
