Part 12 (1/2)
FOOTNOTES:
[4] An e of the reports for the year 1866-7, says: ”The views enunciated by your local committees, while they have the sobriety indicative of practical knowledge, are at the sahtened and expansive The writers of such reportsas they do between the teacher and the parent, and exercising the , that I am struck with the power of composition evinced in these provincial papers Clear exposition, great coance of style, are their characteristics”
[5] Distributed a to an Act of 1835
(Stat 138, -- 2)
[6] Distributed a to the nues of four and sixteen years (Rev Stat, chap 23, -- 67)
[7] Inco to population, under an Act passed Feb 22, 1840 (Stat 1840, Chap 7) This act was repealed by an act passed Feb 8, 1841 (Stat 1841, chap
17, -- 2)
[8] Distributed a to the nues of four and sixteen years (Stat 1841, chap 17, -- 2)
[9] Distributed a to the nues of five and fifteen years (Stat 1849, chap 117, -- 2)
A SYSTEM OF AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION
[An Address before the Barnstable Agricultural Society, Oct 8, 1857]
In the uished American, who has read much, and acquired, by conversation, observation, and travels in this country and Europe, the highest culture of American society, wrote these noticeable sentences: ”The farence, with the rest of the coh into their acres Our style of far, and stupid, and the waste, especially in , where the Lowlands of Scotland were fifty years ago; and what iriculture has made in Great Britain since the battle of Waterloo, and how impossible it would have been for the farmers to have held their oithout!”[10]
It would not be civil for me to endorse these statericultural Education; but I should not accept theh to furnish a text for a layman's discourse before an assembly of farmers
Competent Aenerally, and especially our brethren of England, Ireland, and Scotland, are far in advance of us in scientific and practical agriculture This has been stated or admitted by Mr Colman, President Hitchcock, and last by Mr French, who has recently visited Europe under the auspices of the National Agricultural Society
There are good reasons for the past and for the existing superiority of the Old World; and there are good reasons, also, why this superiority should notLand has been cultivated for centuries in Europe, and often by the same family; its capacity tested, its fitness or unfitness for particular crops proved, the local and special effects of different fertilizers well known, and the experience of enerations has been preserved, so as to be equivalent to a like experience, in time and extent, by the present occupants of the soil
In A occupation by the saed hands as often as every twenty-five years from the settlement of the country The capacity of our soils to produce, when laboriously and systematically cultivated, has not been ascertained; there has been no accumulation of experience by families, and but little by the public; and the effort, in many sections, has been to draw aswas returned to it Far, as a whole, has not been a system of cultivation, which implies improvement, but a process of exhaustion It has been easier for the farh, perhaps, not as economical, if all the elements necessary to a correct opinion could be coe his worn-out lands for fresh soils, than to adopt an iriculture The present has been consulted; the future has been disregarded As the half-civilized hunters of the pahter of the myriads of wild cattle that roam over the unfenced prairies of the south, and preserve the hides only for the commerce and comfort of the world, so we have clutched froardless of the actual and ultietable life; and, as the pioneers of a better civilization now gather up the bones long neglected and bleaching under tropical suns and tropical rains, and by the agency of trade, art, and industry, extort inally derived fro animals, so we shall find that worn-out lands, when subjected to skilful, careful, scientific husbandry, are quite as profitable as the virgin soils, which, froration into the Connecticut valley to the occupancy of the Missouri and the Kansas, have proved so te to our ancestors and to us But there has been some philosophy, some justice, and considerable necessity, in the course that has been pursued Subsistence is the first desire; and, in new countries where forests are to be felled, dwellings erected, public institutions established, roads and bridges built, settlers cannot be expected, in the cultivation of the land, to look much beyond the present inal fertility of the soil Europe passed through the process of settleo Her recovery has been the work of centuries,--ours may be accole life The fact froriculture must proceed is apparent in the northern and central Atlantic states, and is, in a measure, appreciated in the West We have all heard that certain soils were inexhaustible The statement was first made of the valley of the Connecticut, then of the Genesee country, then of Ohio, then of Illinois, and occasionallyhear similar statements of Kansas, or California, or the valley of the Willas these statements were erroneous The idea of soil, in reason and in the use of the word, contains the idea of exhaustion
Soil is not merely the upper stratum of the earth; it is a substance which possesses the power, under certain circu up essential properties of its own for the support of vegetable and ultiives up it loses, and to the extent of its loss it is exhausted It is no reat cities of the world have not, in their building, exhausted the forests and the mines to any extent, than to say that the annual abundant harvests of corn and wheat have not, in any degree, exhausted the prairies and bottom lands of the West Sole year; others in five years, others in ten, while others may yield undiminished returns for twenty, fifty, or even a hundred years But it is plain that annual cropping without rotation, and without compensation by nature or art, must finally deprive the soil of the required ele only those exceptions whose existence is due to the fact that nature ation with rich deposits,--as upon the Nile and the Connecticut,--allowing the land to lie fallow, rotation of crops and the growth of wood, are so many expedients and provisions by which nature increases the productiveness of the earth Nor is a great depth of soil, as two, five, ten, or twenty feet, any security against its ultimate impoverishment
Only a certain portion is available It has been found in the case of coal-reat depths, that they are, for the present, valueless; and we cannot attach much importance to soil that is twenty feet below the surface Neither cultivation nor vegetation can go beyond a certain depth; and wherever vegetable life exists, its elements are required and appropriated Great depth of soil is desirable; but, with our present knowledge and ainst ultimate exhaustion
The fact that all soils are exhaustible establishes the necessity for agricultural education, by whose aid the processes of impoverishment may be limited in number and diminished in force; and the realization of this fact by the public generally is the only justification necessary for those who advocate the imentlele word of criticisreat obstacle to the increased usefulness, further elevation, and higher respectability, of agriculture, is in the body of farmers themselves And I assuriculture is not a cherished pursuit in ards his life of labor upon the land as a necessity froly escape; that he esteems other pursuits as at once less laborious, more profitable, and more honorable, than his own; that children, both sons and daughters, under the influence of parents, both father and mother, receive an education at hoe, nor newspaper, can counteract, that leads them to abandon the land for the store, the shop, the warehouse, the professions, or the sea
The reasonable hope of establishi+ng a successful systereat where such notions prevail
Agriculture is not to attain to true practical dignity by the borrowed lustre that eminent names, ancient and modern, may have lent to it, any more than the earth itself is warht Our systee, rests mainly upon the public belief in its importance, its possibility, and its necessity It is easy on a professional holiday to believe in the respectability of agriculture; but is it a living sentie and faith in your daily labor? Does it lead you to contemplate with satisfaction the prospect that your son is to be a farhter is to be a farine, are test questions which not all farmers nor farmers' wives can answer in the affir their escape, at the earliest moment possible, from the labors and restraints of the farhter to accept other situations, not more honorable, and in the end not usually more profitable, than the place of household aid to the business of the home? How, then, can a system of education be prosperous and efficient, when those for who nor desire to pursue it? You will not, of course, iine that I refer, in these statements, to all farmers; there are many exceptions; but my own experience and observation lead me to place confidence in the fitness of these reland It is, however, true, and the stateht not to be o us are o In what has been accoround for hope, and even security for further advancement
I look, then, first and chiefly to an iricultural education Christian education, culture, and life, depend essentially upon the influences of home; and we feel continually the importance of kindred influences upon our common school system
It will not, of course, be wise to wait, in the establishricultural education, until we are satisfied that every far sufficient support may be derived from a small number of persons, but in the end it must be sustained by the mass of those interested Other pursuits and professions must meet the special clairicultural education they cannot be expected to do more than assent to what the farmers thericultural education has been, as it seems to me, already established I speak of our national, state, county, and town associations for the proriculture The first three h their annual fairs, by their publications, and by the collection and distribution of rare seeds, plants, and animals, that are not usually within reach of individual farencies can exert a powerful influence upon the farh, systematic education must be carried on at home And for local and domestic education I think we must rely upon our public schools, upon town clubs or associations of farovernment to visit the towns, confer with the people, and receive and coricultural resources and defects of the various localities It will be observed that in this outline of a plan of education I oe This omission is intentional, and I will state my reasons for it I speak, however, of the present; the time may come when such an institution will be needed In Massachusetts, Mr Benjae at Roxbury, and Mr Oliver Se at Northampton; but these bequests will not be available for ium, Prussia, Russia, Austria, and the ses have been established; and they appear to be the reatest England has five colleges and schools, Ireland sixty-three, while Scotland has only a professorshi+p in each of her colleges at Aberdeen and Edinburgh In France, there are seventy-five agricultural schools; but in seventy of them--called inferior schools--the instruction is a coiven in our public schools and the discipline of a good farricultural reading and farm accounts Such schools are not desired and would not be patronized aricultural school is established, it es of the country President Hitchcock, in his report, published in 1851, states that six professors would be required; that the first outlay would be sixty-seven thousand dollars, and that the annual expense would be six thousand and two hundred dollars By these arrangements and expenditures he contemplates the education of one hundred students, who are to pay annually each for tuition the suricultural depart academies, at an annual expense of three thousand dollars more These estimates of cost seem low, nor do I find in this particular any special objection to the recoovernment; any other scheme is likely to be quite as expensive in the end