The gold leaf. [volume] (Henderson, N.C.) 1881-1911, 1900-10-18

and he finally goes back to the farm,
without the education which would
have better fitted him for the life
which he is to follow. Every cotton
mill that is built is taking men away
from the farms and making them con-
sumers instead OF producers of food,
and the greater the extension OF the
milling industry the greater the need
OF educated farmers and gardeners to
feed these operatives.
To meet the needs of those who can
stay but short time and who wish in
that time tc get all the Information
they can about farming, the two-year
short course in agriculture has been
devised, and in like manner for those
who wish merely to becom.e skilled
mechanics the short course in me-
chanics has been arranged, and aside
from any scholastic education the
effort will be made to help the men
who merely want the manual training
in shop, garden or field. so that all
may know how to do something we'll
when they leave.
The college is emphatically the
school for the workers, the cranks
who turn the world, the men with a
hobby about which they want to know
all that can be learned. We owe it
today to the generosity of the manu-
facturers that there is any cotton mill
machinery in the college, while the
State Of South Carolina, starting her
college since ours was started, has
appropriated over half a million dol
lars for buildings and has erected and
equipped a textile school as large as
most cotton mills, has built handsome
residences for president and faculty,
and furnishes, with the Federal ap-
preparations, near 800, 900 annual in-
come for the college, OF about three
times what the North Carolina Col
lege has. The South Carolina Col
lege has been pushed forward by the
liberality of the State, while the North
Carolina College has grown in spite
of jealousies and niggardly appropri-
ations. The..college is full of farmers
sons whom their fathers are trying to
educate away from the farm. The
farmers, from lack of interest in their
own profession. cut but small figure
in the rolls. Being deep in the old
ruts themselves, they only seem to
care to get their boys into the great
machine that is swallowing up the
young manhood of the State, and
leaving the farms TO desolation and
gullies. The notion that any young
man can be run into a common mould
and made an engineer or a textile ex-
rSrt is one of the mistakes that is
king made, and many good farmer
OF gardener will be spoiled to make a
mechanic or an engineer out Of the
wrong material. If the, production of
cotton is to keep pace with the con-
struction of cotton mills, there must
be an improved agriculture. II the
increasing number of mill hands is to
be fed, there must be more intensive
farming to do it, and the field for the
farmer is fully as inviting as for the
mechanic. One great reason for the
preponderance CT the Mechanical over
the Agricultural course of study is
the misconception of the scope of the
course in Agriculture. 1t is not the
purpose of the college in any of its
regular courses to teach traders and
the course in Agriculture is really the
thorough course in science and the
application of science. While it GER
tainly prepares man to be more
successful farmer, it is not SO narrow
that the graduate must of necessity
be farmer. He may find as his
course of study progresses, as many
have found, that his life work should
be in the chemical laboratory, in bot
any, in horticulture or in station in
vestigation involving a knowledge Of
pure science. He has broad field for
selection of his life work and il his
love for the farm leads him to the
farm, the State will be better off by
one good farmer who has an accurate
knowledge of the sciences on which
the culture of the soil depends. The
great end of any education is to
enable the man to find out what he is
fitted for, and to enable him TO do
that we'll There are thousands OF
| farmers sons who will make experts
in the mechanical pursuits, and there
are thousands of others who love the
farm and only need better training
to develop their capacity in that
| direction. We have no sympathy
with the notion that boy should 60
to the farm merely because his father
farmed or that boy should stay in
| the shop because his father is me-
chanic. But we utterly repudiate the
notion that because boy has not
| brains enough to comprehend mathe-
matics and mechanics, that he has
| brains enough for the course in agri-
| culture If man has not intellect
enough to take either a mechanical
or scientific education, the best thing
| is to train his hands at something and
make him good workman in some
sort of labor.
The college is "cramped, cab:ned
and confined" for lack Of equipment
for its work. 1t needs a large audi
torium in place of the little room
| given up to the textile work. 1t
needs a good building for this textile
department. 1t needs room for the
hundreds of young men who would be
here if there was room for them. II
needs means for the improvement oi
its farm, larger laboratories and
equipment. In fact it needs doubling
its present size and force. With the
capacity to take them it would not be
long before the students were mum.
bered by the thousands instead o.
hundreds.
What is North Carolina going to dc
for her farmers and mechanics? NJ.
Lots Of womer can't get off joke