Evening capital journal. (Salem, Or.) 1888-1893, 1888-11-22

necessary muscle, and no college
| professor can teach him better. A
familiarity With these farm opera
tions Of course is desirable, and any
intelligent boy can learn it all in a
few lessons in observing the opera
tions of the workmen on the college
farm, which should be so managed
as always to present to the studenta
model of what good, practical,
money-making farming is.
In another light this much-praised
manual labor idea is wrong; hard
manual labor i'm the afternoon is Il
poor preparation for study ut night.
A man who has worked faithfully
i'm the afternoon is tired, and his
brain will sympathize with his body,
and he will be in no condition to
study inteligcntly the subjects for
the class room next day.
Student labor can never be made
economical or effective, because Of
its short duration and because Of
the fact that the boys themselves
see that it is mere farce, and go
through it in a perfunctory manner,
thus losing precious time which
should bear better fruit in mental
culture. And then again, during
the summer months, when all the
studies i'm natural science can best
be prosecuted, and farm manage
lment at its height, all these teachers
of agriculture, botany, entomology,
etc, drop their work for a rwo
months holiday, because other in
stitutions do so. Thus more time
is lost, and the wonder is, not that
the agricultural colleges graduate SO
few farmers, but that they ever
turn out any. The training of their
administrative faculty by the daily
observance of farm management in
the hands of men who thoroughly
understand business methods in
farming, would be worth more to
them during the summer than at
any other time of the year, and the
idea that professors and students in
such an institution need an annual
outing of couple of months is
utterly ridiculous. Why a college
professor with a lecture or two
daily, and more than half of his
time comparatively free, living in
healthy country place, with every
facility for wholesome exercise,
should he paid for two months
service which he does not render, is
hard to understand. Do they pro-
prose to teach students that n farm
manager can successfully conduct
his business, and yet spend two
months every summer at the hotel
or other popular resorts?
II professors andstudents honestly
"put in their ltime," as people at
any other husines are expected to do,
could we not look for greater results,
not of farm hands,I but of farmers,
thoroughly understanding their
business and qualified to direct the
skilled, muscular forces which they
will find in the shape of farm hands
in every good farming neighbor-
hood. Farmers sons avoid agri-
cultural colleges, not because they
are lazy and do not wish to engage
in manual labor, but because II
young man seeking an education
seeks to be more than newer of
wood and II drawer of water, and
because they perceive that this
demagogical cry about dignified
labor is really a belittling of mental
culture.
The sooner our agricultural schools
realize that compulsory manual la
Dor on the part of II student is not
Il trHvesty on work, but is an abso-
lutte waste of valuable time, the
sooner they will enter on Il higher
plane of usefulness, and succeed.in
sending out real farmers instead OF
half-trlined smatterers In science
and practice. In any case, long, In
dependent experience only can
ripen the farmer, just AS 1t does the
doctor and the lawyer, and nc
school in any Of these professions
can do more than prepare a man for
studies which his whole life will be
too short tooomplete eMtirely.-Cor
Country Gentleman.