The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1871-12-30
Elevating Farming Influence of or
Schools.

The farmer moves slow, he belongs to
the most conservative class of our popula-
ton. He readily secs that the professional
man, the Engineer the Machinist, the
Teacher, and even the Carpenter require
an education for his business; but the
farmer can plod on from one generation to
another without even an aspiration for
advancement.
Our schools do not tend to make the
farmers sons and daughters cherish and
aspire to improve rural life. They see
that even our agricultural colleges are pre-
sided over by purely literary men, who
have not the smell Of the earth upon their
garments. These things are not assuring
to the young man who would rise by being
eminent as an agriculturist. The follow
ing article shows how this matter looks to
an Illinoisian.
"Our physical growth, our political safe
ty, and our moral and intellectual well-be-
ing, depend largely on our agricultural
advancement and 4 popular understanding
of it's virtue. Yet our farming is often
wrctchedly rude, our system deplorably
defective, and we fail to develope such
great improvements in agriculture as char
acterize other occupations. To-day scarce
ly one farmer in hundred realizes five per
cent. on his money invested, while money
in large quantities is readily lent for ten
per cent. on the best landed securities
Why is it? Are our farmers lazy? Is the
soil naturally unproductive Are our mar
kets poor? Emyhatically no? Our farm
ers are unsurpassed for energy, our soil is
without rival in productiveness, and our
markets, are amply remunerative. The
source of our trouble is found in the fact
that aoe lack education. We cannot talk
Understandings of acids and phosphates.
We are ignorant of chemistry and botany,
and we do not know where to set our cab
bage plants that the harvest may not prove
us to be cabbage-heads ourselves.
An ambitious young man brought up on
a farm nowadays, sees the defects of our
agricultural system and the ignorance of
his fellow farmers, and resolves to elevate
the calling. He enters college with this
object in view, and whether it be CLASH
cal or an agricultural institution, he finds
a new world opened to him. The rust and
shackles which confined his latent powers
are worn away. He finds new society, and
is most favorably impressed with the i'm
provement on his former social privileges
He returns home to spend his vacation,
and everything seems altered to him. His
enthusiasm for farming has received a
check during his absence, and his friends
at home, noticing the improvement in the
young mans manners and appearance,
become ambitious to have a lawyer or y
doctor in the family. Hence every intlu-
ence is employed to divert him into the
new channel; the growing constrast be-
tween home society and college priv
ileges, which becomes more apparent dur
ing each succeeding vacation, casts the die,
and the young collegian studies law, while
his duller bother,r debarred from college
pAi'iSSSs, iolio"S III vi llS
father, and farming remains in statue quo,
for another generation to do likewise.
Occasionally, however, an educated
young man tnrns his attention to farming,
and the question that gives him the great
est embarrassment is where to find a wife,
educated, energetic and refined-one who
can sympathize and talk intelligently with
him on general matters outside of the do
nestle routine-whose education has not
untitled her for the cares and duties in
cumbent upon her. Unfortunately, great
as is the tendency in our colleges to lead
young men from rural pursuits, many times
more pernicious is the education received
in our female seminaries by discouraging
young ladies from becoming farmers wives;
and it is Il frequent expression among
them, "Rather than marry farmer I'd
live and die an old maid :" They remem-
Der, if they are farmers girls, the few social
privileges of their young days-that farm
ers and farmers sons, as a rule fail to cul-
tivate the rthetical part of their natures,
and they become impressed with the idea
that farmers are Doors and farming con-
temptible. Added to this, the fact stares
us in the face that many American women