The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1890-08-13
Editorial NOtings.

IMPROVING THE FARMERS. "A writer,
speaking of farming, expresses the
thought that New England farming as
an industry has touched bottom in its
decline, and must now improve. We
believe, with him, that agriculture must
improve, but we do not believe that it
has been declining. 1t is not improv-
ing so rapidly as some industries, and
so, relatively, it may seem to outsiders
to have declined. But this view is err
roneous, though many farmers seem to
accept it. 1t is not only fact, but an
easily proved fact, that the absolute
condition of the New England farmer
never was so good, never was so hope
full, as it is to-day. There is no ques-
tion that the statistics of the new census
will furnish abundant facts to support
this view of the matter.
But, relatively, as compared with
mechanical businesses and the indus
trial arts generally, there is no doubt
that the progress of agriculture and the
agricultural interest is slow, and this
slowness has the same effect upon the
unthoughtful observer as glance from
the window of a rapidly moving train
at another train on a parallel track 60
ing in the same direction, at slower
rate. The slower train actually seems
to be going backward. 1t is so with
farming. Its apparent decline is a
mental delusion, as the other is an OPP
tical one.
WHY are these other industries out
speeding agriculture? Mainly because,
in this country particularly, capital and
intelligence are massed in all the other
industries, while in agriculture every
thing still depends upon individual
effort and individual resources. Cor
porate or cooperative work has never
yet been successfully applied to farm
ing, and we much doubt if they ever
can be. We do not look upon it as
desirable. We want to retain at least
one form of industry in which the indi-
vidual is not reduced to a mere cog in
great machine.
MORE steam is wanted on the agri-
cultural train. This steam is wanted
in the mental mechanism of the farmer.
To be plain, he needs to be educated
for his work. The rural schools should
teach him with view to his business,
his future occupation; and this applies
both to the girls and the boys. AS
soon as agriculture becomes the bust
ness of trained men and women it will
take its proper place and receive its
proper rewards and honors.
You ask, {" How is this to be eff
fected? Do you think the agricultural
college is the cure-all for the evils of
the present situation?" God help US, if
that is all! The common schools ought
to be and must be made the instructors
of the farm children in the elements of
agriculture, as found in the natural
sciences. We want qualified teachers
for this work, and it is the immediate
and pressing duty of the state to estab-
lish the proper training-schools with
that end in view. Give us young men
and women for teachers whose eyes
have been opened so as to see the won
derful works of God all around them,
to understand something of them, and
to have Gas they will have) an enthusi-
astic love of spreading abroad that
fruitful knowledge. Nature is not a
cursed thing. However much the me-
dieval philosophy, surviving still in too
many minds, may have looked upon the
fair earth which God has made and
blessed as an accursed spot, the time
of such error is well passed, and the
fact should be proclaimed.
VERMONT may linger in the rear. 1t
is a strange thing that while elsewhere,
all over the nation, Vermonters are in
the van of progress, they have the APP
pearance at home of being partially, if
not wholly, fossilized in all matters of
enterprise and improvement. Is it that
we drive away our live men and retain
only those of semi-vitality? If there
were to-day in I" old Vermont" (why
so old, when she was the bantling of
the revolution?) one thousand of those
men who, born among the green hills,
are to-day leading in every good work
in other states, we could before the
next legislature adjourns revolutionize
our educational system and put fire
into the veins of our chief industry that
would soon make Vermont a center OF
the new education for an industrial
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