The citizen. (Honesdale, Pa.) 1908-1914, 1913-04-18

body except gray-haired aged peo-
pie. Schools are very small. If you
stop to ask those people the cause OF
all this emigration, they will give you
various answers. Some will say that
young people don't want to work any
more. Others will answer that the
pleasures of town life allure them
thither. Still others say that farm
life to them means nothing but
drudgery. The first answer is not
true. Young people at present are
willing to work as strenuously as
those of former days but they see
that constant and perpetual work
will reduce them to a machine and
deprive them of the force of person
ality. We must give them time for
recreation. We can not elevate
boys and girls with work alone.
Recreation and good social expert
ences are as truly necessary to their
development as skillful and directed
work.
Not all boys raised on the farm
are adapted for farm life. 1t is not
the aim of national social workers to
keep all boys on the farm but to
make rural life shine forth in its
true glory and retain the young peo-
pie who are adapted for farm life,
in the country, and make advantages
possible in rural communities that
can not be had in cities.
Good schools in rural districts,
with an enriched course of study, are
an important factor to bring about
better conditions. But they are not
the only factor. We must have good
roads as well, and an effective rural
credit system. A young man who
buys a farm on borrowed capital at
six per cent. interest is a cooked
The financial burden is generally too
heavy for him to bear over seasons
of partial failure of crops. How
much better it would be if some of
the money from rural districts that
flows into the Golfers of watered
stock promoters were spent in enrich
ing country life, or loaned at rea-
sonable rate to purchase farms!
Rural schools with a constant
change of teachers, professionally un-
prepared, can not contribute very
much to the solution of those prob
lens, nor can township high schools,
unless experienced teachers are Sc
cured and retained, who are able to
read the needs of the community and
can reasonably measure up to those
needs.
High school boys and girls can not
be very much inspired by cut and
dried college and university ideas,
nor can these same ideas influence
the farmer to contribute literally in
the nature of taxes.
We have been aping higher institu-
tions of learning too long. 1t seems
to me that just as much beauty, SYM
metry, charm, mental discipline, cul-
ture, and poetry can be found in the
study of growing corn as in the study
of MOSES, their classification, COM
mitting their horrible foreign names,
and in the romantic search for them
over rocky slopes and precipices.
Pity the poor child of fourteen or
fifteen years whose time in Botany is
spent in committing columns OF for
eign names of fungi, MOSES, etc.,
who knows very little of the nutri-
tive value of the common crops, or
their economic values, and whose
eyes have never been opened to the
beauty of the common plants around
him. Botany in rural districts must
be closely correlated with agricul-
ture and each must be interpreted in
terms of the other to be of any prac-
tical value.
The teacher of agriculture ought
to teach all the related subjects.
The proposed corn contest has a
tendency to create an interest in corn
culture and, no doubt, will result in
greater acreage of corn as we'll as
study of varieties adapted for diff
ferent localities. 1t will result in
making the boy more discriminating
in seed selection and more thought
full in his work. The habit of COM
parison and discrimination that he
may acquire will be applied to his
work in general. Therein consists it's
chief value.
If prizes are given at all, they
should be so distributed that they
are within reach of different districts
and communities. The county ought
to be divided into districts, each hav-
ing common conditions. If each dis
trict is to be awarded a prize, it will
be greater incentive for the boys
to work.
Yours truly,
J. J. KOEHL LER