The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1875-06-15
Agricultural Education.

AK IlCulUul OIL uuSoVAOi
We take the following article from
the Watchman and Journal. There is
much food for thought in it for New
England farmers;
Mr.. Joseph N. %Sturtevant, n of the
well-known S%turtevant brothers, Ayr
shire breeders, of birmingham, Mass,
sends the following extract from the
Transactions of the Scottish Highland
Agricultural Society to the Country
Gentleman
From the exceptional educational
advantages which Scotland has so long
enjoyed, agriculturists in this country
have been greatly superior in point of
instruction to those of most other u
tries, and it is also important to note
that the increase in the value of landed
property in Scotland has been exeep-
tionally great. 1t was shown about
three years ago, from reliable statistics
produced by government, when the
Irish land question was before parlia-
ment, that while the rental of land in
Ireland had doubled during the pievi-
Gus hundred years, and that of Eng
land tripled, the rental of Scotland had
increased seven fold in the same time.
There has been, then, in that space OF.
time, an increase in the value of landed
property in Scotland of five hundred
per cent, against an increase of two
hundred per cent. in England and one
hundred per cent. in Ireland. This is
a remarkable fact and there can be no
doubt that the explanation of it is to be
found chiefly in the vastly superior
school system which Scotland has pos
sessed, and in the intelligence and en-
terprise which it has been the means
of developing among her agricultural
classes"
Mr.. St%urtevant then goes on to COM
ment upon the decline in American ag-
riculture, and the necessity of n better
education among farmers. He says,
truly:
"Our fathers have gathered the cream
of the earth-leaving to this generation
the subsoil mostly intact, and all inn
poverished coating of loan for the
seed-bed. 1t is chiefly by the acquisi-
ton and use of knowledge, not within
the grasp of our fathers, that we may
hope to repair the injury wrought by
to yield satisfactory profits. With a
wasting farmer, there is the necessary
wasting of human beings, who look to
farms for support. AS a stream in a dry
season affords each day Il diminished
volume of water, so the wasting farm
steals away the funds that give means
of education, so that the farmer is re-
duced to a non-supporting income, and
he must needs give over scholarship,
leisure, ETC., to other classes of society,""
Mr.. Sturtevant appreciates the terri
bile difficulty of making an ~uneducated,
or but slightly educated class under
stand the necessity for a better educa-
ton for their children, and observes
that ''there are farmers and neighbour
hoods of farmers in every considerable
section of New England, that require q
new impulse from without, need an ed
ucation forced upon them! in order
that they retain a respectable position
in life's struggle"
But how can this he done? How
can an education be forced" upon a
town or a school district against the
will of its voters? Under u Ameri-
can system of government the thing il
impossible and yet without the edu-
cation there is not the slightest posi-,
bility of IN improved agriculture.
Our sole hope in this matter comes
from the c%onsoling fact that illiterate
farming pays worse and worse every
year, and that as education penetrates
around the edges of our agricultural
districts, or spreads from village centers
into the surrounding country, the edu'
Gated farmers will so increase the pro
~ductiveness of their farms that they car
make a good profit at prices hat will
not enable the ignorant farmer to live
and will so ~"freeze him out, " and allow
the land TO pass into the hands of the
educated farmers educated sons. II
this way inefficient farmers will be re
duced to the condition of farm laborers
and upon well conducted farms will b,
compelled to learn good farming. Thei
children, also, will be brought under
different set of influences, and have al
opportunity that their parents neve
would give them to acquire knowledge
and thus restore themselves to the posi-
ton of independent c~ultivators of tn,
soil.
In view of the great national need O
an improved and progressive agricul
ture, it is a patriotic duty for every ed
ucated farmer TO make farming pay
He had better be doing that than to b
writing for the press or making speech
es at agricultural meetings, though tina
is a good use for his spare hours, il h
has any. The only possible way, w
repeat, under our system of govern
ment, to bring any effective pressur
upon our scrub farmers Is to "freez
them OUT by surrounding them will
circles of well-managed farms aud un
derselling them till they cannot max
Il cent. So long as they can max
a bare living, they will be con
tent with that, and never make an el
fort for improvement. To speak
plain" we have got a class of people
even in New England, that are but
trine better, more enterprising or enel
getic, than the crackers or ''poo
whites" of the South. They are Tia
men who make our poor butter. an
who are satisfied with one hundrel
pounds of it per year to the cow. The.