The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1904-09-19
A BAY STATE FARM
PRACTICAL AGRICULTURE AS
TAUGHT AT MT. HERMoM

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Huge Experiment to Dignity Labor
Its Agricultural Department in
Charge of Trained Scientist.
A. thousand acre farm with rows of
corn annie long! That is not COM
mon sight everywhere in the great
west, and yet we have specimen of
such wholesale agriculture right here
i'm Massachusetts,.
When d.. Moody established the
Mount Hermon School for Boys in the
town of Mortified, prominent thought
in his mind was to dignity manual la
Dor. Much is written everyyear about
education leading young people from
manual labor and setting up false STAN
dards of life The problem has been
worn threadbare in connection with the
negro until a Booker Washington was
raised up to emphasize the Importance
of Industrial training for the colored
population. The same discussion is
now in the air in connection with Amer
lean ascendancy in the Philippines. Mr.
Moody planned to make manual labor
more popular by requiring all the pu-
pills at his school to employ two hours
each day In some form of hand work.
The boys do all the work in the dorrni-
tories, boarding house and laundry
But these would not furnish the headed
amount Of employment, so Mr.. Moody
10 a L.. -,
be used in connection with the school.
Last fall the agricultural department of
the school was put on a strong basis by
securing Harry Hayward, M. &c., to
take charge Of it. To accept this posi-
tion he resigned an important place
with the department OF agriculture at
Washington. His duties are two-fold.
In the first place, he has entire charge
of the management of the land, and in
the second place he has the direction of
the classroom work in agriculture. The
boys who work under his direction re-
eeive fromhim instruction in the princi-
lceive from him instruction in the princi- !
they are actually doing.
The agricultural school was formally
dedicated in June with an address by
Professor Bailey Of Cornell University.
Though Mr.. Haywood has not been at
Mount Hermon long enough to COM
plete his plans. his ambition is to sup
plement Mr.. Moody's idea of dignifying
manual labor by presenting practical
object lesson in profitable and attrac-
tive agriculture. This school farm,
therefore, is run primarily for the cash
profits, though the artistic values are
not disregarded. One hundred acres of
the one thousand are given up to the
school campus, where trees Of different
kinds and ages, shrubbery and flowers
present'a beautiful picture, and give OPP
portunity for practical and theoretical
instruction in horticultural and land
scape art. The three hundred and fifty
acres Of arabic land are not run for ex7,
.perimental purposes, as 1t is necessary
that the farms in connection with the
agricultural colleges should be man
aged. The aim is to produce crops for
home consumption and sale, which will
give a favorable balance sheet. AL
though this is Mr.. Hayward's first year
on the place, the results already in
sight proclaim him one of Massachu-
sets leading farmers and the Mount
Hermon farm as one Of the most nota-
Bile in the Bay state.
He has in his favor a home market of
about FIVE hundred people connected
with the Moody institution as consum-
ers of farm produts. He also has the
advantage that comes from the ability
to reduce cost Of production by doing a
large business, Farming is a branch
of manufacturing and corn and pota-
toes can be produced cheaper on alarge
scale as we'll as cloth or shoes. The
leading crops are vegetables and fruit,
as well as fodder for the cows. Among
the extensive exhibitions of farm work
which the place shows, none is more mo-
.ticeable than seventy acre corn field
in reclaimed intervale where the rows
are a mile long. When this was
ploughed seven turns about the field
made days work. Other farming OPP
erations are on an equally large scale,
warranting the profitable use of ma
chinery ana other economies. One field |
of seventeen acres is devoted to barley
for the grain, and is probably the lar
gest field Of this kind in New England |
and the only one in Massachusetts, bar
ley being used for fodder in this state. |
Thirty-five acres areft to be set to apple |
trees this next autumn.
In forestry one can find here the lar
gest and possibly the only movement in
very practical forestry in the state. |
The farm has about four hundred acres
of forest land. Over much of it the |
trees have gradually got the best of the |
grazing cattle and stolen in on the pas
ture. Massachusetts has much land |
just like this. The trees have come in |
as a result Of the conditions,
largely due to the cattle grazing among
the young sprouts and last fall fifteen |
thousand young white pine seedlings |
were set in the open spaces where the |
trees had not started naturally. Dur
ing the winter group of boys was kept |
busy cutting mature trees from the for
est-pine, herllock, chestnut and oak. |
A steam sawmill Is now converting /
these logs into merchantable lumber,
which will be a source Of income to the I
farm, while it leaves the forest all the
more valuable for the removal Of these
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