Chapters in Rural Progress

CHAPTER VI

EDUCATION FOR THE FARMER

The two generations living subsequent to the year 1875 are to be witnesses of an era in American history that will be known as the age of industrial education. These years are to be the boundaries of a period when the general principle that every individual shall be properly trained for his or her occupation in life is to receive its practical application. Future generations will doubtless extend marvelously the limits to which the principle can be pushed in its ministrations to human endeavor, but we are in the time when the principle is first to receive general acceptation and is to be regarded as a fundamentally necessary fact of human progress.

We are already "witnesses of the light." Even within the memory of young men has it come to pass that the old wine skins of the old educational institutions have been filled with the new wine of science and of knowledge and training applied to the industries and businesses of life.

Agriculture has perhaps been slow to feel the current of the new wine as it flows from the wine press of fast-growing industrial and social need. But the least hopeful of us can, I am sure, already see signs of a vast awakening. The farm, as well as the pulpit, the bar, the schoolroom, the shop, the counting-room, is breathing in the new idea that knowledge and training can be made of use to every man.

This awakening is due not merely to the desire of agriculturists to be in fashion, nor to the efforts of agricultural pedagogues, but to a real need. It is common knowledge that in America we have not farmed, but have mined the soil. We have "skimmed the cream" of fertility, and passed on to conquer new areas of virgin soil. This pioneer farming has required hard work, enterprise, courage, and all the noble traits of character that have made our American pioneers famous and that have within a century subdued a wilderness to civilization. But the farmer of today faces a new situation. The fertile lands are fairly well occupied. The old lands are depleted. These old lands must be handled skilfully if they are to produce profitably. They must be used because there is little else to use, and because they are near the best markets. Meantime, scientists have been studying the deep things of nature, and have been learning the laws that govern soil, plant, and animal. Thus we have the farmer's need met by the theorist's discoveries. The farmer, to avail himself of these discoveries must know their meaning and be able to apply the general principle to the specific case. This means agricultural education.

Then again, the consumption of high-class products increases at least as rapidly as does our wealth. The demand comes not alone from the rich, but from the middle classes of our cities. Skilled artisans are large consumers of choice meats, fruits, and vegetables. To grow these high-grade products means skill, and skill means training, and training in the large sense means education.

The need for agricultural education, is, then, a real and vital one. It is pressed upon us by economic and social conditions. It is in line with the movement of the age.

In discussing agricultural education, we must not forget that the farmer is also a citizen and a man. He should be an intelligent citizen, and should therefore study questions of government. As a man, he should be the equal of other men of his same social rank. He therefore needs a good general education. He is more than mere farmer. While as farmer he must connect his business with its environment and out of his surroundings gain sound culture; while he should know nature, not only as its master, but as its friend; he should also be in sympathy with all that makes modern civilization worth while. And even as mere farmer, he finds himself face to face with grave social problems. He must not only produce but he must sell, and his selling powers are governed by conditions of the market, by transportation facilities and practices, and are affected by the laws of the land. Hence he must be a student of these problems and must know the broad phases of agriculture and its relations to other industries.

No intelligent man doubts the need of agricultural education. Let us, then, say a word about the kind of education demanded. This question is settled very largely by the discussion we have just had about the need of this education. First of all, this education will give a fair mastery of the principles that govern proper soil management and plant and animal growth. This is fundamental. The farmer is dealing with natural laws, and he must know in them their applications. He cannot be blind to their dominance. They insist on recognition. They are jealous masters and good servants. Nature serves only the man who obeys her. To obey he must know. The truth shall make him free. How to secure larger crops of better products at less cost and still maintain soil fertility, is the first demand of modern agriculture, and its solution depends in large measure upon education.

But education does not stop here. The farmer is also a seller as well as a producer. He is a business man. He is manager of an industry. He is an investor of capital. So the question will arise, Can he get any help from education in the handling of the business phases of his farm? He certainly can. You cannot teach a man business in the sense of supplying him with good sense, business judgment, ability to handle men, and so on. But you can study the general conditions that govern the business of agriculture, and you can report the results of your researches to the practical farmer; and he, if he is willing, may learn much that will be helpful to him in deciding the many difficult questions that confront him as a business man. Farm administration in its largest sense will, then, be a most important phase of agricultural education.

It is quite possible for the individual farmer to succeed admirably if he is equipped with a sound training in the principles of production and in farm management. But there are still larger questions that farmers as a class must meet if agriculture is to have its full success and if the farmer himself is to occupy the social position he ought to have. Agriculture is an industry among industries. Farmers are a class among classes. As an industry, agriculture has relations to other industries. It is subject to economic laws. It involves something more than growing and selling. The nature of the market, railroad rates, effects of the tariff and of taxation, are questions vital to agriculture. So with the farmers socially considered. Their opportunities for social life, their school facilities, their church privileges, their associations and organizations – all these are important matters. So agricultural education will not fail to call attention to these larger questions.

The well-educated farmer will, then, be trained in three lines of thought – first, that which deals with the growth of products; second, that which deals with the selling of products; and third, that which deals with agriculture as an industry and farmers as a class of people.

We may next discuss as briefly as possible the methods by which agricultural education may be advanced. We may not consider all of them, but rather attend only to some of those agencies that seem of peculiar interest just at this time.

There is one underlying requisite of successful agricultural education that is all-important. It is faith in agriculture. Any man to succeed grandly must have absolute faith in his business. So the farmer must believe in agriculture. Agriculture cannot attain its highest rank unless the men engaged in it believe in it most profoundly. They must believe that a man can make money in farming. They must love the farm life and surroundings. They must believe that the best days of agriculture are ahead of us, not behind us. They must believe that men can find in agriculture a chance to use brains and to develop talents and to utilize education. Agricultural education rests on this faith. Give us a state filled with such farmers and we can guarantee a strong system of agricultural education. But the seeds of education cannot grow in a soil barren of the richness of sentiment for and confidence in the farm. Our agricultural colleges have been criticized because they have graduated so few farmers. But the fault is not all with the colleges. The farmers also are to blame. They have not had faith enough in the farm to advise young men to go to college to prepare for farming. They admit the value of education for the law, for building railroads, but not for farming. This must be changed, is being changed. The last ten years have seen a revolution in this respect, and the result is a mighty increase in agricultural educational interest.

One powerful means of agricultural education is the farmers' organization or association. All our dairy, horticultural, poultry, and live-stock associations are great educators. So of an organization like the Grange, its chief work is education. It brings mind in contact with mind; it gives chance for discussion and interchange of ideas; it trains in power of expression; it teaches the virtue of co-operation. Farmers blunder when they fail to encourage organization. Sometimes, out of foolish notions of independence, they neglect to unite their forces. They are utterly blind to their best interests when they do so. They should encourage organization if for no other reason than for the splendid educational advantages that flow from it.

However, our chief interest is, perhaps, in those institutions that are formed purposely and especially for agricultural education and which are usually supported out of public funds. There are three great fields of endeavor in which these institutions are working. The first step is to know – to know the truth. So in agriculture we must know. Know what? Know how nature works. So the man of science studies the soil and finds out what plant-food it contains, how the water acts in it, what heat and air do, and the inter-relation of all these elements. He studies the plant and its habits and tries to discover how it grows and how it can be improved for man's use. He studies the animal and endeavors to learn what are the best foods for it and what laws govern its adaptation to human food. He studies climate and tries to find out what plants and animals are most appropriate to different locations. He studies injurious insects and diseases and devises remedies for them. He discovers, experiments. So we have research as the first term in agricultural education. The institutions of research are our experiment stations and United States Department of Agriculture. Their work may be likened to the plowing of the field. They strive to know how nature works, and how man can make use of her laws in the growing of plant and animal.

The next thing is to teach. The farmer too must know. Knowledge confined to the scientist has little practical use. It is the farmer who can use it. Moreover, new teachers must be trained, new experimenters equipped, and leaders in every direction prepared. So we have agricultural colleges and schools. If experiment is to be likened to plowing, the work of the schools may be compared to sowing and cultivating.

Agricultural colleges have been in existence in America almost fifty years. Their careers have been both inspiring and disappointing. They have had to train their own teachers, create a body of knowledge, break down the bars of educational prejudice. This work has taken time. The results justify the time and effort. For today agricultural education is becoming organized, the subjects of study are well planned, and competent men are teaching and experimenting. The disappointment is twofold. They have not graduated as many farmers as they should have. This is due not wholly to wrong notions in the colleges. It is, as suggested before, partly due to the lack of faith in agriculture on the part of the farmers themselves. But the colleges are in part to blame. Many of them have not been in close touch with the farmers. They have often been out of sympathy with the interests of the farmers. They have too frequently been servile imitators of the traditions of the older colleges, instead of striking out boldly on a line of original and helpful work for agriculture. Today, however, we see a rapid change going on in most of our agricultural colleges. They are seeking to help solve the farmers' difficulties. They are training young men for farm life. The farmers are responding to this new interest and are beginning to have great confidence in the colleges.

It is sometimes said that most farmers who get an agricultural education cannot be trained in the colleges. Doubtless this is true. Probably a very small proportion even of educated farmers can or will graduate from a full course in an agricultural college. Many will do so. There is no reason why a large proportion of the graduates of our college courses in agriculture may not go to the farm. I have no sympathy with the idea that those courses are too elaborate for those young men who want to farm. It must be recognized, however, that even if our agricultural colleges shall graduate hundreds and thousands every year who return to the farm, it still leaves the great majority of farmers untouched in an educational way unless other means are devised. But there are other means at hand.

We have first the agricultural school. The typical agricultural high school gives a course of two or three years, offering work of high-school grade in mathematics and English, with about half the time devoted to teaching in agriculture. Many young men want to get an insight into the principles of modern agriculture, but cannot afford time or money for college work. This course fits their need. A splendid school of this design has been in successful operation in Minnesota for more than a dozen years, and has nearly five hundred students. In Wisconsin there are two county schools of agriculture for a similar purpose. Other schools could be named.

The agricultural colleges also offer shorter courses of college grade, perhaps of two years. These are very practical and useful courses. Not only that, but nearly all the colleges give special winter courses of from ten days to fourteen weeks. These are patronized by thousands of young men. So in many ways are the colleges meeting the need. We all agree that it is desirable for a young man to take a full college course, even in agriculture. But it is better to have a half-loaf than no bread. Yes, better to have a slice than no bread. The colleges furnish the whole loaf, the half-loaf, and the slice. And young men are nourished by all.

One reason why agricultural education has not made more rapid progress is because the children of the country schools have been taught in such a manner as to lead them to think that there is no chance for brains in farming. Both their home influence and their school atmosphere have, in most cases perhaps, been working against their choice of agriculture as a vocation. It therefore becomes important that these children shall be so taught that they can see the opportunity in farming. They must, moreover, be so trained that they will be nature students; for the farmer above all men must be a nature student. So we see the need of introducing into our rural schools nature-study for the young pupils and elementary agriculture for the older ones. This is being successfully accomplished in many cases, and is arousing the greatest interest and meeting with gratifying success. We shall within ten years have a new generation of young men and women ready for college who have had their eyes opened as never before to the beauties of nature and to the fascination there is in the farmer's task of using nature for his own advantage.

But when we have increased the attendance at our agricultural colleges tenfold; when we have hundreds of agricultural schools teaching thousands of our youth the fundamentals of agriculture; when each rural school in our broad land is instilling into the minds of children the nearness and beauty of nature and is teaching the young eyes to see and the young ears to hear what God hath wrought in his many works of land and sea and sky, in soil, and plant, and living animal – even when that happy day shall dawn will we find multitudes of men and women on our farms still untouched by agricultural education. These people must be reached. The mere fact that their school days are forever behind them is no reason why they shall not receive somewhat of the inspiration and guidance that flow from the schools. So we have an imperative demand for the extension of agricultural teaching out from the schools to the farm community. The school thus not only sheds its light upon those who are within its gates, but sets out on the beautiful errand of carrying this same light into every farm home in the land. This work is being done today by thousands of farmers' institutes, by demonstrations in spraying and in many other similar lines, by home-study courses and correspondence courses, by co-operative experiments, by the distribution of leaflets and bulletins, by lectures at farmers' gatherings, by traveling schools of dairying. These methods and others like them are being invoked for the purpose of bringing to the farmers in their homes and neighborhoods some of the benefits that the colleges and schools bestow upon their pupils.

We have seen something of the need of agricultural education, of the kind of education required, and of the means used to secure it. Does not this discussion at least show the supreme importance of the question? Will not the farmers rally themselves to and league themselves with the men who are trying to forward the best interests of the farm? Shall we not all work together for the betterment both of the farm and of the farmer?

CHAPTER VII

FARMERS' INSTITUTES