The Evening statesman. [volume] (Walla Walla, Wash.) 1903-1910, 1907-05-31

for instance, resulted in bringing the
people back to the land, and has en-
abled the Danish peasant to compete
in extraordinary fashion, not only at
home but in foreign countries, with all
rivals.
Agricultural colleges and farmers
Institutes have done much in inStruc-
ton and inspiration; they have stood
for the nobility of labor and the neces-
ity of keeping the muscles and the
brain in training for industry. They
have developed technical departments
of high practical value. They seek to
provide for the people on the farms
an equipment so broad and thorough
as to fit them for the highest require
ments of our citizenship; so that they
can establish and maintain country
homes of the best type, and create and
sustain a country civilization more
than equal to that of the CITY, The
men they train must be able to mees
the strongest business competition, at
home or abroad, and they can do this
only as they are trained not alone in
the various lines of husbandry but in
successful economic management
These colleges, like the state expert
ment stations, should carefully study
and make known the needs of each
section. and should try to provide rem
edies for what is wrong.
The education to be obtained in
these colleges should create as int,-
mate relationship as is possible be-
Of
facts of actual life. Educational es-
Establishments should produce highly
trained scholars. of course: but in a
country like ours, where the educa-
tional establishments are so numer-
Gus, it is folly to think that their main
purpose is to produce these highly
trained scholars. Without in the least
disparaging scholarship and learning
on the contrary, while giving hearty
and ungrudging admiration and sup
port to the comparatively few whose
primary work should be creative schOl-
arship-it must be remembered that
the ordinary graduate of our colleges
should be and must be, primarily a
man and not scholar. Education
should not cOnfine itself to books. 1t
| must train executive power, and try
| Ito create that right public opinion
which is the most potent factor in
| the proper solution of all political and
social questions. BoOk-learning is
| very important, but it is by no means
| everything; and we shall never get
| the right idea of education until we
| definitely understand that a man may
| be well trained in bOok-learning and
yet in the proper sense of the word,
| and for all practical purposes, be ut
| terly uneducated while a man of com
paratively little book learning, may,
nevertheless, in essentials, have
good education.
1t is true that agriculture in the
United States has reached very high
level of prosperity; but we can not af-
| ford to disregard the signs which teach
us that there are influences operat-
| ing against the establishment or re-
| tention of our country life upon
really sound basis. The OvereXten-
| Sive and WaSteful cultivation of piOn-
eer days must stop and give place To
a more economical system. Not only
! the physical but the ethical needs of
| the people of the country districts
must be considered In our country
life there must be social and intel
! lectual advantages as well as a fair
standard of physical comfort. There
| must be in the country, as in the town.
| a multiplied ton Of movements for In
| tellectual advancement and social bet
terment. We must try to raise the
average of farm life, and we must also
| try to develop it so that it shall offer
exceptional chances for the exception
al man.
All over the country there is con-
slant complaint of paucity of farm la
Dor. Without attempting to go into
all the features of this question
would like to point out that you can
never get the right kind, the best kind.
of labor if you offer employment only
for few months. for no man worth
anything will permanently accept
system which leaves him in idleness
for half the year. And most import
ant of all. 1 want to say a special word
on behalf of the one who is too often
the very hardest worked labOrer on
the farm-the farmers wife. Reform,
like charity, while it should not end
at home, should certainly begin there;
and the man, whether he lives on a
farm or in a town. who is anxious to
see better social and economic cOndi-
tons prevail through the country at
large, should be exceedingly carerul
that they prevail first as regards his
own womankind. 1 emphatically be-