Weekly journal-miner., 1910-08-31

1 tunately we see now what never be- fore was seen in any civilization an aroused and alert public interest in the problem, a recognition of its gravity and a desire to attempt its solution.
 "The problem does not consist merely in the growth of the city. Such a growth in itself is a good thing and not a bad thing for the country. The problem consists in the growth of the city at the expense of the country; and, even where this is not the case, in so great an equal ity of growth in power and interest as to make the city more attractive than the country, and therefore apt to drain the country of the people who ought to live therein.
 "The human side of the rural life problem is to make the career of the farmer and the career of the farm laborer as attractive and as remuner ative as corresponding careers in the city. Now, I am well aware that the farmer must himself take the lead in bringing this about. A cen tury and a quarter ago the wise Eng
 
 the efforts to improve French wool: "A cultivator at the head of a sheep farm of 5000 or 4,000 acres would in a few years do more for their wOols than all the aeademicians and philosophers will effect in ten cen turies. It is absurd to think that any man who has studied the sub ject only theoretically is fit to direct those wno practically work at the matter. But, friends, I wish to in- sist to you hereto you practical men, who own and work your farms that it is a pernicious absurdity for the practical man to refuse to benefit by the work of the student. The English farmer I have quoted, Young, was a practical farmer, but I he was also a scientific farmer. One reason why the great business men of tOday-the great industrial lead ers-have gone ahead, while the farm CT mas tended to sag behind the others, is that they are far more willing, and indeed eager, to profit by expert and technical knowledge the knowledge that can only come as result of the highest education. From railways to factories no great industrial concern can nowadays be carried on save by the aid of a swarm of men who have received a high technical education in chemistry, in engineering, in electricity, in one or more of scores of special subjects. The big businessman, the big rail way man, does not ask college-train- ed experts to tell him now to run his business; but he does ask numbers of them each to give him expert ad- vice and aid on some one point in- dispensable to his business. He finds this man usually in some graduate of technical school or college in which he has been trained for his life work.
 "In just the same way the farmers should benefit by the advice of the technical men who have been trained | in phases of the very work the farmer does. I am not now speak ing of the man who has had an or dinary general training, whether in school or college. While there should undoubtedly be such a training as foundation (the extent differing ac- cOrding to the kind of work each boy intends to do as a man), it is never theless true that our educational sys- tenn should more and more be turned 1 in the direction of educating men | towards, and not away from, the farm and the shop. During the last half-century we have begun to de- velop a system of agricultural educa- tiOn at once practical and scientific, and we must go on developing it. But, after developing it, it must be used. The rich man who spends fortune upon a fancy farm, with entire indifference to cost, does not do much good to farming; but, on the other hand, just as little is done by the working farmer who stolidly re- fuses to profit by the knowledge of the day; who treats any effort at improvement as absurd on its face, refuses to countenance what he re- gards as newfangled ideas and con- trivances, and jeers at all 'book farm ing wish I could take representa- tives of this type of farmer down to Long Island, where I live, to have them see what has been done, not as philanthropy but as a plain busi- ness proposition, by men connected with the Long Island Railroad, who believe it pays to encourage the de- velopment of farms along the line of that railway. They have put prac- tieal men in charge of experimental farms, cultivating them intensively, and using the best modern methods, not only in raising crops, but in se- curing the best market for the crops when raised. The growth has been astounding, and land only fifty miles from New York, which during our entire National life time has been treated as worthless, has within the last three or four years been proved to possess a really high value.
 "The farmer, however, must not only make his land pay, but he must make country life interesting for