The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1915-03-12
A MODERN RURAL SCHOOL.

| the language of the country. Thls
| YOU will find nevertheless, according
to a bulletin issued by the United
States bureau of education, If you
take the otter Lake road running
south from Houghton, Mich, and
| follow it for some 6 miles, accord
ing to a report furnished the bureau
of education by l.. A. Chase, Hough-
ton high school, Houghton, Mich. It
takes you into a settlement of Fin
nish farmers, men once miners, but
now following their natural vocation
For rs years these people have lived
off the highway of civilization, far
| from markets, without telephone or
rural free delivery, living and dying
unto themselves alone. They are in
the copper district of Michigan, but
are miles off the copper ranges in d
region wholly neglected except by the
lumberman and such agriculture as
these Finnist farmers can practice
They happen, however, to be within
the limits of Portage township, which
is about three times the size of the
usual Michigan township, with an up
to-date school system based upon the
township unit system popular in the
northern peninsula of Michigan.
Life and industry in Portage town.
ship are varied. At the northern end
is Houghton, an important shipping
point by lake and railroad. BackA of
Houghton are the mining locations.
among the Oldest in the state, and be-
yond these is the farming district
The township school system has Is
schools, including a well-equipped city
high school at one end of the scale
and the otter Lake agricultural
school at the other. The latter school
is now in its second year of operation
and was built to solve number of
problems. How to get an immigra
ton population on to the land and
keep it there; how to add agriculture
to the industries of the district
through the agency of the public.
school; these are some of the problems
attacked by the school management Of
Portage township.
The otter Lake agricultural school
stands at the corner of a wooded
school ground 40 acres in extent. 1t
is eight-room two-story structure,
not counting small rooms and base
ment. 1t is equipped with electric
lights, gas, water under pressure,
plumbing, and hot-water heating pre-
cisely as in a city school. 1t is also
equipped with apparatus for teaching
agriculture by laboratory methods, do
nestle science, and manual training,
and a dairy department is furnished
with cream separator, Babcock tester,
and large rotary churn. In a chicken
house adjacent is a flock of pure
blooded fowls, and near by are pigs of
similar rating. Other live stock is to
be added, including high-grade breed
ing animals, for the school seeks to
be the agency whereby better grades
of live stock are introduced into this
community. So it is also with the
crops. Four acres of the 40 belong
ing to the school have been cleared,
and most of this has been devoted to
the raising of cereals and vegetables
of a variety superior to that found in
the neighborhoods. So far as prac-
ticable the work out-of-doors is done
by the pupils, boys and girls alike.
The school stands ready to do any
thing. that promises the regeneration
of the community economically, So
cially and intellectually, and will not
allow precedent or, convention to in
terfere with the attainment of this OBJ
ject. 1t is to work not only for the
the area of SO square miles. 1t is
therefore a community center, and
once a month the parents assemble
to discuss problems in which they are
interested and to listen to talks by
F'innish-speaking or English-speaking
persons capable of instructing them
Local men, prominent in the copper
country, appear before these meetings
l. <Nf
telephone system, or silos, or the
Grange. Formerly only four persons
in the district took agricultural pa
pers, and none were members of the
Grange. There was no telephone line
into the district and no rural free de-
livery. Now these have come or are
coming in the near future.
In the equipment of the school the
Finnish farmer can see some things
which he himself can have if he will
He sees the four-horsepower oil en-
CINE running a small dynamo that
and at the same time pumps water
and air into a large pressure boiler
for a modern water system through
out the building. He discovers that
it takes five gallons of kerosene. cost
ing seven cents a gallon. to run this
equipment for 25 hours, and that the
machine will also run the churn and
cream separator and do other sundry
jobs, eliminating many items of man
ua1 labor. He becomes interested in
new crops that are probably more
profitable to grow than those he
knows; the rigorous climate, it is be-
lieved, can develop extra hardy varie-
ties of seeds to be sold to farmers
farther south with mutual advantage
The school has begun to help in mar