The Fargo forum and daily republican. [volume] (Fargo, N.D.) 1894-1957, 1911-01-17

/ dividual land owners, but that each
one who tills the soil should be COM
PEELED to observe in his practices GER
tain fundamental principles that have
been established by science and veri-
fled I'm agricultural experience.
II is held that since we are all de-
pendent upon the soil it Is within our
rights to exercise such legal control
over its manipulation as will insure
its productiveness.
Rights of People to Live.
II such course ever is deemed nee
essary legal rights involved will not
appear as a debatable part of the ques-
ton. The right of a people to live
outweighs all other rights and land
ownership is not a right Of the indi-
vidual except as nations choose to
make it so.
Without entering into the social as
poets Of the question it can be safely
asserted that individual land owner
ship and management offers possibin-
ties of better results than does public
management if the several land owners
will conform their practices to the
principles laid down in agricultural
chemistry, physics and biology.
1t must be admitted that the loss
and waste incident to individual man
agement and control of lands has been
fairly appalling, far outstripping in
deed anything that the human mind
can comprehend. At the same time
the land owners cannot be held wholly
| TO blame, even if ignorance be counted
crime.
The means of conveying scientific
agricultural information to the great
body of American farmers has been
wholly inadequate and even today
there is hardly the possibility of the
majority of farm boys obtaining more
than the most fragmentary and supe4-
fetal agricultural education. The aa-
ricultural colleges with their room and
equipment can accommodate only the
smallest fraction-the present ratio in
this state being about one student to
| 100 families
! Gus conservation problem then con-
fronts us with this aspect: First
that our one great natural resource
is our soil. Second-That through
present methods its fertility is being
unnecessarily wasted and depleted and
|
eminent of the land owner is the only
course outside of public control that
will save us and our posterity this
one great source of wealth.
! We who have watched these move
ments can recall how few years ago
it was that the wise ones were SOL
EMMY discussing whether agri-
culture should be taught at
all our public schools and
the reasons devised for not doing so
are already set aside and labelled as
curiosities to be gazed at and laughed
at but nevermore to be taken seri-
ously.
Cannot Overestimate.
1t is impossible to overestimate the
seriousness and Importance and diff
Guilty of the question that confronts
us-that of educating in the funda-
mental principles of agricultural sci
ence all who are to hold and operate
our farms.
AS a people we must put aside all
pickering and jealousy, try to grasp
the significance Of this problem and
set in operation means and methods
that will bring about its solution.
|
have not the training for this class
of work and the means providing this
training have not been developed. We
should not take alarm that the gradu-
ates of our normal schools are required
to know something of agriculture since
80 per cent of the pupils they are to
instruct must obtain their whole course
| in agriculture at their hands, nor
should anybody see disaster in the fact
that few of the agricultural college
students at federal expense and in
conformance with federal law, are
taught how to teach.
Agricultural High Schools.
A bill introduced at Bismarck last
week provides for the creation of ter
agricultural high schools. In this state
| high school teacher must have a
college diploma. Where are the teach
ers for these schools and the other
high schools that offer agriculture to
come from?
| The educational institutions that are
trying in a measure to meet this emer-
gency, for such 1t u.s. should not be
criticised for activities outside their
sphere while the efforts of all working
together will furnish but small per-
centage of the trained teachers now
needed to teach agriculture in the
many thousand schools of the state.
Besides the scientifically trained
teachers larger school grounds and bet
ter schoolhouses with laboratory equip
ment will be a necessity.
| We have hardly yet come to realize
what education in the future can and
must mean IL our resources are to be
intelligently handled and prosperity
maintained.
| In the past 1t has been compare
lively easy to educate well the few
needed for the professions; for the flu
/ ture we are confronted with educat-
ing well the whole population.
The cost Of giving to each man, prac-
ideally speaking, a professional edu-
cation Ii Of course greater than leav-
ing the mass Of the people In ignor-
ance but that need not be considered
so long as The cost il in the nature