The Opelousas courier., 1893-05-13
A Defective System.

Governor Foster made a good point in hi:
| remarks before the Agricultural Society the
other day when he referred to the prevailing
ambition among the young men of the pres
emit day to become lawyers, doctors, clerks
and politicians to the exclusion of the farm
ers, His Excellency correctly stated thai
this ambition, so general among the young
men of the period, is largely due to a defect
i've system of education which teaches the
boys that it is more honorable to struggle
along in the professions for years in the hope
of one day reaching the top of the ladder
than it is to pull off ones coat and manfully
go to work in the oldest and most honorable
occupation known to man.
The effects of this false system of education
10 every day brought forcibly to our atten'
tion in the increasing number of bright young
men who annually forsake the remunerative
farms of the country to "build themselves
up" in the various professions and c~lerkships
medical, law and commercial schools of the
country each year shows the enormous drain
being made upon the farms of the country
and the immense number of young doctors
and lawyers ground out periodically from
these factories" presents an appalling pic
tnre to the mind of the thoughtful student Ot
political economy.
Whereunto will it all lead} This is the
question uppermost in every mind, and it is
a question which can only be answered in
the light of the past experience.
In New England this condition of things
has been at work perhaps, longer than any
other section of the Union, and hence it may
be taken as o fair sample of the effects OF
this system upon the social conditions of the
country. What do we find theref The cen,
Sis statistics show that this process Of rural
disintegration has been going on silently and
steadily until the land Of the Puritan has al,
most become a deserted land. Year after
yaor thu atoadv ti6a 0f MIGRATORY humanity
has been turned from the country towards
the city until to-day, the deserted farms and
wasted homesteads Of hundreds and thou
sands of ono thrifty and prosperous Puritan
farmers greet the eye of the traveller on
every hand. The hardy, pioneer spirit of the
brave days of old seems no longer to find
Judgment in the breasts of the younger gen.
which all would turn.
The only corrective to be found is in II re-
turn to the proper system of education-a
system which will teach the true dignity of
labor; a system which will bravely expose
and denounce the false theories of society by
which so many of our brightest and noblest
young men are held in fetters worse than
slavery a system which will unfold to the
student of humanity the beauty and nobility
of an Independent manhood which scorns
alike the mad scramble for fame and fortune
in the surging ranks of the pettifogger, the
quack doctor, the shop olerkship, and the
clanaorous "pie hunter" and which quietly
and modestly exemplifes the qualities Of true
manhood by impressing the fact upon the
youth Of the State that the farm and the
wor kshop have, in all ages Of the past, been
the furnaces in which the mightiest charac.
ters of history have been forged and that
an eHeminate race of clerks and shopkeepers
have never yet produced suoh sturdy sons as
Washington, Webster and Lee.-B. R. Advo-