The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1888-01-18

office or dignity from the doorstep of the
farmhouse than from any other house
in the land. The agricultural laborers
of the Old World aud the poor whites
of the South indicate what would be
our condition if the career of the New
England farmer had been begun and
continued under different auspices and
influences, if they had not inherited
those traditions and opinions which
foster intelligence. The same condi-
tions would result should the farmers as
a class here and now abandon their
time-honored principles and suffer
themselves and their posterity to sink
to the level of an uneducated class.
Next to genuine Christianity, the par
ent of all true democracy, there is no
such leveler as education, and it levels
up and not down. Education is ad-
vancing, and the farmer must keep up
with it or be left behind. 1t does not
require more eXertion to keep up to the
present standard, as there are so many
aids to knowledge. The men or the
community who are content to do
things as they were done fifty, or even
twenty-five, years ago, are Rip Van
Misunderstanding while others are
around them are striving and growing.
An advanced education for the boy and
girl-better than their parents had-is
necessary for the farmers to maintain
their position of dignity and equal
esteem with the other classes. Educa-
ton is further necessary TO the farmer
that he may hold his own in the sharp
competition of the present time, which
has reached even the colleges, the
churches and benevolences. We can
not 90 backward to the old times, and
must make the best of it and turn it
into good channels. There has been
an extension of markets, increased IA
cilities of transportation and an influx
of foreigners, all of which combine to
cut down the margin between cost of
production and the market, out of
which the farmer formerly secured a
comfortable living. To meet this
altered condition the farmer needs to
call to his assistance all the aids which
education can furnish. Farming is
now business, rather than an employ
ment; an art, and not merely ian in
dustry, and intelligence is the farmers
best tool, his best hand, his best fertil-
izer. 1t is not always the best educate
men in town who are its best farm
ers, but education, combined with poor
endowment, lack of energy, bad habits
or scant good sense, is not a.match for
limited education with sound sense,
energy and good habits, and it is the
same in other pursuits as in farming.
The fair question would be, Does edu-
cation add to what man is over what
he would be without it, or add enough
to pay its cost?' Another objection
often urged is the question of the value
of school education in practical farm
ing. John l.. Sullivan has immens c
muscular power, and the fact that he
has it remains, though he makes a
brutal use of it, when it might be
turned in useful channels. Education
aims to do for the mind what physical
training does for the body-to develop
power which may be applied in one di-
rection or another. Experience de.
velops some faculties of the mind
while it leaves others unused. Farm
life tends to develop a readiness
of resource, sort of Observation-Disclosures
hardness. Education aims to sharpen
all the faculties-the eye to note cor
rectly, the ear to hear readily and ac-
curately and makes the memory re.
tentive. 1t also teaches one to express
himself clearly and readily. Of two
boys of equal parts and educational
privileges up to sixteen years, one ther
to remain on the farm till twenty-one
the other to continue his education til
of that age, which, in the general rur
of life, would have the advantagef
Does not enforced school education al
ways bring to any people increased
power of production?" He compared
Scotland with Ireland, and Prussia ant
Sweden with Italy and Spain, as sup
porting that idea. Schools are no
the only means of education, but are
the ones to be chiefly depended upor
and are the necessary conditions of thu
others. Men who have gotten an ed
ucation out of business life and activ,
social intercourse often lament thei
lack of school privileges and urge thei
importance on young men. Once il
fifty years, perhaps, some great geniu
may be found in a community where
there are not good schools who will
push his way to eminence, but the res
will stay content in the ignorance iron
which thew have no desire TO rise