Oxford Democrat., 1914-09-08
The Educated Farmer.

HE takes up farming not as work
necessary to grow crop, but as q busi-
ness, giving due consideration to the
many factors which make farming sue
cess or failure.
"From his study of soils he realizes
that the soil is an important factor In
farming and not merely place on which
to farm.
"The farm he considers not as some
thing from which to take q living but
something with which to make liv.
ing"
These terse, clear-cut statements ap-
pear in the essay Of Miss Vanderbilt
which was awarded the gold medal by
the Saddle and SiIloin Club of Chicago.
Miss Vanderbilt graduated year ago
from the Kansas State Agricultural Col.
lege, having completed the four-year
course in agriculture and is now employ
ed at the Kansas Experiment Station.
Her statement shows the vast gulf that
exists between the thinking and the un-
thinking farmer.
The farmer who goes about his work
fully comprehending these truths is the
man who is worthy of the name farm
er." The numbers of such men are in-
creasing and the agricultural colleges
are q tremendous factor in bringing
them out.
We are entering an era in which men
and women of education, culture, refine.
ment, and business ability will find in
the farm one of the choicest places in
which they can live and give expression
to their training and talents. We have
all been very busy in the last two or
three generations, building up an aris'
tocracy of business and professional life.
There has been drilled into the boys and
girls of our land the idea that to be
somebody they must get off the farm.
Opportunity all pointed towards the
city. The boy or girl who elected to
stay by the farm was thought dolt or
dullard. In the minds of these city
adopted people he was associated with
the pigs and the chickens. at was too
bad" they would say, "that Bill and
Mary didn't have little more ambition
and get off the farm" We have all
been busy creating such sentiment but
the "worm has turned" Bill and Mary
are now deciding to stay on the farm be-
cause it holds out to them opportunities
that can never be matched in the city.
Our poor old ideals are being shattered
and there is growing upin all places
distinct longing for the land. Some of
this is Just as false as was the former
anxiety to get away from the land, but
the college is turning back to the land
class of men and women who will build
true agricultural aristocracy out of
which will come the factors which will
save this nation from itself.
There are, according to the last census,
8 1851 ,5O2 opportunities for the educated
farmer in this country,-that many in
dependent units in which men may have
the control of their own affairs, and in
which they may be independent, not in
the old, narrow, individualistic sense,
but in the broad, comprehensive indie
pendence which comes to men who are
free to work out their problems with the
cooperation and mutual assistance OF
the neighbors-and at the same time be
masters of their own destiDies. Busi-
ness and professional life offer compare.
lively few such opportunities, for OF ne
cessity in the cities most men and wom-
en- must work for some one else. There
are opportunities plenty for those who
have no natural liking for the farm, bat
the number of opportunities in the
country far exceed those of the city for
healthful, happy, remunerative work In
which men are their own masters.
This does not mean that every man
who has not had the privilege of col.
lsge training IL shut out of becoming
life member of this new agricultural at
mosphere-any man with good, ordinary
horse sense can read and study and get
into his system the philosophy of rela-
tionship between the farmer, his farm,
his soil, and bis crops, which Miss Van
derwilt has so aptly expressed. The
young men who have the opportunity to
90 to college have great advantage,
however, and will forge ahead much
faster than the others when once they
get their footing in the soil.
With over 100000 farms and so
many, many, of them so poorly farmed,
the opportunity is open for all who will
apply themselves. As better qualified
men come up the unqualified will have
to step back. This is worth thinking
DairymaD.