FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
33 
of pathetic letters that have come to my 
office for a reply: 
Dear Sir:—I have twelve hundred dol¬ 
lars that I have saved in the last ten 
years and wish to start in farming or 
fruit growing, as my health has been 
pretty badly broken by hard office work. 
There are three children in our family 
who ought to be brought up on a farm. 
I want to get away from town so that I 
can enjoy the companionship of my 
family. 
Where in your state can I invest and 
make a living from the start? 
Tours truly, 
Can there be anything more pathetic? 
After ten years of hard, unrelenting toil, 
with health broken, and disappointed in 
his highest ambition of providing for his 
family. Ten years of .the best of his life 
spent in following the wrong vocation. 
Ready, like the drowning man, to grasp 
at a straw, he risks his future on the ad¬ 
vice of a man to him unknown and in a 
distant state. I must confess to you, 
ladies and gentlemen, that when that prop¬ 
osition is placed before me to answer, my 
courage fails. It is too serious a mat¬ 
ter. 
These letters, of which the above is a 
composite, would not have made so deep 
an impression on my mind; nor would 
I have realized the magnitude of the un¬ 
rest in the city population, but for one 
incident that came to my attention rather 
accidentally. 
Mr. A. D. Shamel, a young friend of 
mine, was asked to award the prizes in 
the corn exhibit of the North-west. In 
an interview with a Chicago newspaper 
reporter he made mention of the fact that 
many young men wanted to go back to 
the farm. In less than ten hours letters 
began to pour in, and for two days three 
3 
stenographers were unable to complete 
the work of replying to the inquiries. 
This happened just before the money 
panic. The burden of all these inquiries 
was, How to get back to the farm ? 
I do not contend that all of these men 
would make a success of farm work. It 
had been clearly demonstrated to them, 
however, that they were misfits in the 
city. They were eagerly seeking for an 
opportunity to get away from the city, 
but the way was securely blocked. 
I have drawn out these illustrations at 
length to show fully the present condi¬ 
tion. (No one can say that he is not in¬ 
terested, for it is our own children who 
are swelling and will swell the throngs 
in the over-crowded cities.) 
Dr. Sledd, in his address tonight, has 
shown most clearly that our public schools 
teach our boys and girls away from the 
farm and from the grove. Nowhere in 
our common school system do we find 
anything that will make the boy more 
efficient on the farm or grove, or the girl 
more efficient in the house. 
AGRICULTURE IN OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. 
In discussing the matter of agricul¬ 
tural education in various parts of the 
state this year, a number of people have 
told me that they could teach their boy 
more agriculture and better agriculture 
on the farm than he could learn in any 
school. My natural retort is: “But do 
you do it?" The candid answer must be. 
No. Every mother here is able to teach 
her girls and boys arithmetic, spelling, 
and geography; but she does not do it, 
simply because it is much cheaper to hire 
it done, and at the same time the teach¬ 
ing will be much more efficient. Let me 
ask again: How many of us send our 
i 
