Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1880-11-05
Are Agricultural College. orapy Use :

Are Agricultural Colleges OF any Use :
Professor @. c. Caldwell, in the Rural New Yorkerl
This very important question could be an
swered on better evidence than we now pos
sess, if the farmers might be persuaded to
give them for few years full and fair tri-
al; but the indifference of those for whose
particular benefit these colleges were estab-
lished is notorious. Let them be organized
ON the most liberal basis possible and manned
with teachers who are masters of their re-
spective professions, and every desired facil-
ity be offered for special education in all the
branches pertaining to agriculture, and yet
their lecture rooms and laboratories are but
sparingy occupied by young men who come
from the farm and intend to go back there.
There seems only to be n lavish waste of
money, which might have been more usefully
expended if given to the poor. Where does
the fault lie but with the farmers themselves
If these colleges fail to do all their intended
work. when the mass of them are satisfied to
have their sons, or as many of them as they
can keep at home, follow in the old ruts of
practice which they themselves have followed
and deepened, and of course, rs they very
correctly reason, no special education is nee
essary for such life.
I hold that in simple justice to the farmer
boy he should have as good a chance as the
one who goes to the college to get what he
can there to help him to attain success in
some other field. II young man feels as
sured that TO choose farming for his calling
will not practically debar him from getting
liberal and useful education adapted to his
calling, he will be less likely to choose some
thing else; and while with business ability
and n taste for farming he will, it is true,
make good farmer anyhow, yet he cannot
but make a more honorable and successful
h. L. t.,
minglng with other young men, engaged in
like manner in the study of those branches
of science which are intimately connected
with his life's work. A writer in an English
agricultural paper not long since, speaking of
the strengthening appreciation of the value
of an education in that country, said very
APPLY, ut is now believed that energy com
mon sense and intelligence will everywhere
outrun energy, common sense and ignorance,
and that technical and scientific education
will confer on those who enter any profess
sion immense superiority over those who
have it not
In recent report of committee of the
French National Assembly on Il project for
the establishment Of new agricultural col
lege, the agricultural superiority of Germany
over France, in spite of inferior natural ad-
vantages, is very fully exposed and it is at
tributed to the better development of agricul-
tural education in that country and the more
common and intelligent application of scien-
tlhc rules in agricultural practice; and it is
stated in this report that there are in all Ger
many 1874 agricultural colleges, besides a
great number of schools of lower grades
reaching clear down to the primary instruc-
ton, and that Germany spends on agricultu-
raj education seven times as large a proper
ton of her income as does France Yet the
French Government this year appropriated
1875, 600 francs, or $500, 600, for agricultu-
raj education, of which nearly $3.50, 600 were
for the running expenses of her three agricul-
tural colleges and the National Agricultural
Institute, at Paris over and above their re-
ceipts.
Germany has a better system of primary
and higher education than we have, taking
the country through, and yet she finds it
profitable to add to it all this system of spec
ial instruction in agriculture and branches re-
lating to it. The agricultural conditions that
| prevail in the older and more thickly settled
parts of this country are very similar to those
that prevail in that country, and whatever is
found to be essential to the highest agricultu-
raj success in the one case, is likely to hold
| good for the other. If agricultural colleges
and experiment stations are there found, af-
ter an experience of many years, to be so
useful as to deserve and receive such liberal
| oLh AVhlA1 huppOil JUN run tuc bONtIu-
ment and the people, then to say the least,
they deserve fair trial here to the extent, if
nothing further, of the like support of the
| people.
Let this matter take up some of your
thoughts as you compare notes with your
| brother farmers at your fairs, and see if, Civ
en- like business ability, the most successful
men among you are not your best educated
men, remembering, however, that the man
who raises the biggest pumpkins or the heavi-
est crop of corn or potatoes is not necessari-
| ly the most successful farmer. To compare
notes justly you must 60 to his home and
look ut his surroundings there-his fields, his
barns and his house and his bank account, as
well as his crops. Taking all these things in
to consideration l venture to say, without
fear of contradiction, that the man who is
found to have the happiest family, the most
children who are contented at home, the
most pleasant house and convenient barns,
the most servlceable stock and the best look.
ing farm with all its belongings, will be
| found to be the best educated member of
your agricultural community. And if this is
SO, ask yourself whether it is not your duty
to fit out your son who wishes to follow your
own most honorable calling with all that is in
your power to give him, that you may help
him to gain like enviable distinction.