Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1909-01-27
Professor Hays, Wilson'S Assist
ant and an Iowa Boy, Visits
Old Home in Hardin
WANTS SCHOOL CONSOLIDATION
Mr.. Hays Discusses DeIinquencies of
Rural Schools and Explains Objects
of Proposed National Legislation -
Importance of Teaching Agriculture
to Farm Youths. i.
to metropolitan.

Eldora, Jan 27.-Your correspondent
recently had the honor and pleasure of
an interview with Assistant Secretary
of Agriculture Hays during brief in
| terval in that busy mans round of
duties in Washington. Professor Hays,
a former Eldora boy, while recognized
as a leading authority on agriculture
in this country, has specialized along
the lines of breeding of plants and an
cation in agriculture, homemaking and
mechanic arts.
| Professor Hays was formerly con-
nected with the Minnesota agricultural
experiment station, and for nearly two
decades made q study of the breeding
of useful plants and animals. His sue
cess with breeding grains and grasses
has been noteworthy in particular, not
to say startling. With the expenditure
of $4,000, he has produced improved
varieties of wheats and other grains
which are conservatively estimated to
be worth 100000, 900 more to the state CT
to mention adjoining states where
these important seeds are being used,
and he has had equal success with
grasses and other plants as well.
Best Crops in "Folks."
Professor Hays, like President
Roosevelt considers that the best crop
that can be raised on a farm is folks"
The farming population form 80 per
cent of our nation, and to them we
must look for new and virile blood,
brains and Drawn to keep up our
standard of strength and vigor. In no
other class probably will we find so
many of the good fashioned AM
erican citizen of a hundred years ago,
of the kind that wrested this country
from the grasp Of Great Britain and
the Indian, and that made it great by
the sweat of his brow, with his high
ideals and vigorous morality. And yet
there is no class of our citizens so
neglected and so much left to look out
for themselves as the farmer. This
neglect has been particularly marked
along the line of education, altho the
parcels post and good highways are
something the farmer is entitled to but
hasn't got.
Wants School Consolidation.
The schools furnished for the educa-
ton of the farm boys and girls are for
the most part little one-room affairs,
too often With an immature boy or girl
in charge who does not know much
more than the pupils themselves. The
1o, 9th IF Sab al &c tnn hriaf
the subjects taught not of the right
kind. and the facilities for going to and
coming from school nil.
One of Professor Hays ambitions to-
ward which he is bending all his
energies is.to see that state of affairs
remedied, to see a system of twenty
large consolidated rural schools in
each county where formerly 1875 little
schools existed. He would have teach
ers trained in the vocational as well |
as the traditional school subjects.
These schools have conveyances which
gather the children up at their front
gates, and take them to school in the
and return them to their
homes in the evening, safe and sound,
without the braindulling fatigue of
walking anywhere from four to ten
miles every day to get an education. In
the matter of agricultural education
Professor Hays may be considered the
best informed man in the United
States. if not in the world
Congress Takes Up Question.
A bill has been introduced in cong |
ress by Representative Charles r.
Davis, of Minnesota, which should have
the support of every farmer in this |
broad land of ours, for it will not only
the present highly undesirable /,
state of affairs, but 1t also provides
an agricultural high school in every |
district, to which pupils |
can go, should they SO desire, after
their course In the con-
solidated rural school.
The increased taxation to meet the
expenditure for agricultural
and industrial education is but 10 cents
per capita per annum, while the in
creased efficiency of the pupils would
many times Offset this cost. Even such
4 small thing as a bushel Of wheat or
corn more per farm, or another sheep
Or lamb, or a bushel more of potatoes,
Or dollar saved because of more in
1elligent methods would more than off
set the cost of this new education, but /
when we consider that this gain is
.rif1ing as compared with the gain that .