Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1875-12-16
agricultural department.
.rlgiual.1
AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS.

A notion, radically wrong, prevails with re-
spect to the education of the working class of
our country. By working class, we mean
farmers and mechanics. 1t is the current
opinion of most persons that lawyers, physi-
clans, merchants and preachers should be ed
ucated but no education is necessary for those
who are designed to labor as farmers and me-
chanics. The truth is, our people are practi.
cally of the notion that manual labor and ig-
norance are indissolubly welded. This is the
prevailing notion all over the South. If a
man is seen engaged in any manual employ
ment the conclusion is jumped to at once,
that the fellow is an ignoramus, with no men,
tai training at all, or is barely able to read
and sign his name, so that, with difficulty, it
can be read. Unfortunately, this is too near
the truth. Our country, to-day, is groaning
beneath burden of ignorance, lazness and
crime Ignorance and crime are welded to-
gether.
There are certain things that all classes of
society should be taught. These lie at the
foundation of all education. They form a
kind of base upon which special education
may be laid. This acquired, the pupil should
be trained in the things which pertain more
especially to his proposed avocation. The
pupil who expects to spend his life in the prac
tice of law, should study law; the pupil who
contemplates the practice of medicine, as the
occupation of his life, should study those
things which have a direct bearing upon his
profession the pupil who contemplates the
preaching of the gospel, should study the
Bible. Instructions for the study of law,
medicine and theology, we have in all sections
of our country. Here the thing stops. 1t
taken for granted that men are born with all
the training that is necessary to cultivate
farm successfully. This is not the notion of
professional men alone but of farmers them
selves.
The same insane notions prevail amongst
mechanics and with respect to mechanics.
All this stuff about natural competency is
nonsense. No man is even capable of farm
ing successfully any more than any man is
born lawyer. Every lawyer learns law by
studying law, and then by practicing it. The
same is true with respect to farming. In or
der to farm successfully, there must be cor
rect theory, and that theory put into prac-
tice, is successful farming. No man is born
with theories in his head. These have to be
learned. In the nature of things, theory pre-.
cedes practice. This is just what we want
acknowledged and followed in this country.
We want an agricultural school in every
county in the State of South Carolina, in
which young men who. expect to make liv-
ing by holding the plow, can learn the true
theory of cultivating the soil.
Some one is ready to say this is book
farming system you are attempting to estab-
lish. We care not by what opprobrious name
you call it; we need something inaugurated
which will produce a change in the farming
system of the country. We are sorry it is
so, but truth demands that we say that in
the South, generally, there is more ignorance
manifested in the tilling of the soil and less
success, considering the climate and soil, than
in any place under the shining sun where ag-
riculture is followed to the extent that it is
here. Every law of nature is violated by
some who call themselves farmers, and only
a feware understood and obeyed by any of our
Southern farmers. The growth of plants is
subject of which many of our farmers know
absolutely nothing. Most of them do not
even observe closely enough the growth of the
crops which they cultivate, to learn anything
about their nature.
The reason of this is, most of our farmers
have not education sufficient to enable them
to study their own profession. They are
about as we'll posted in law as they are in
the science of agriculture. We expect the
ignorant lawyer or physician to fail. Why
should we not expect the farmer, who is ig-
norant of the nature of his avocation, to
fail? He must partially fail, whatever may
be our calculations.
There are some things which every boy
should learn before he takes hold of the ham
dies of the plow, or should study at the same
time that he is learning to plow. Learning
to plow is simply learning to use an imple-
ment More than this is required to make
farmer. He must have knowledge of the
law of vegetable life. The success of the
farmer depends upon his obedience to these
laws. How can he obey law of which he
knows nothing? The way to learn these laws
is to study them in the school where they are
taught. We have no such schools in our
country. We ought to have them. The vel
fare of the country requires that such schools
be established and properly manned and thor
oughly equipped.
BOYS NOT SUITED TO THE FARM.-If the
only good that boy did about the farm was
to repair the pump, hang gates, make mole
traps, put in rake teeth, file the saw, and
hang the grindstone, and he did these things
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