say that the galleries have been obtained for visitors, or members who cannot find seats on the floor of the house and I am informed by those who know that they can hear fully as well, or better, in the gallery than on the floor. I think those who cannot get seats here will find it more convenient to be seated in the gallery than to stand.

I am requested to call the attention of any who are engaged in breeding Polled Durham cattle to meet in this hall, immediately after the noon recess, Mr. Smith, of Reynoldsburg, in regard to the formation of a society.

We all realize the close connection there is between the business of agriculture and the business of school teaching and we are glad to know this morning that we will have an address by one who we believe is well qualified to instruct us upon this important question. I now take great pleasure in introducing to you Professor Thomas F. Hunt, Dean of the College of Agriculture and Domestic Science, Ohio State University, who will now address us.

AGRICULTURE AND THE SCHOOL TEACHER.

BY PROF. THOMAS F. HUNT, Columbus, O.

Some time ago I visited one of the best township high schools in one of the best townships in one of the best counties in one of the best states in the union. This high school is situated in the geographical center of the township, is three miles from any village and some distance from any other building. There is no village in the township of over five hundred souls. The building for the accommodation of these pupils leaves scarcely anything to be desired. The principal of the school was an ambitious, conscientious, intelligent, energetic man who had at heart the best interest of his pupils as he understood them. The people of the township showed a most commendable pride in the achievements of this school and an earnest desire for its usefulness. I wish there was a school similar to this in the center of every township of every county of this state.

Inasmuch as practically every boy or girl in this school came directly from the farm and as the majority of them will return to it, I was naturally anxious. to know what this school was doing to make better farmers and better farmers' wives. I asked if they studied botany in this school. No, the spring term was short and the principal was busy at this time of year superintending the district schools. Then of course they taught chemistry. No, there was not room in the course for chemistry. There were so many other things to be taught. There was room, however, for two years of Latin. Did they teach physics? Yes, they taught physics. Did they have any experimental or laboratory work in connection with the physics? No, they could not afford to purchase the apparatus. They had just purchased a fine piano, which, however, they expected to pay for by subscription.

Here then was a four-year course of study composed chiefly of mathematics, Latin, history, and literature but containing hardly a hint of those vast fields of modern thought and investigation which mean so much to the world at large and to the farmer in particular. I allow no one to exceed me in appreciation

of the value of the study of Latin, higher mathematics, history, and literature. I have had occasion to say and I here repeat that I would sooner have a man well educated in Greek than poorly educated in agriculture to run a farm for me.

But for the farmer of tomorrow chemistry will certainly be more important than Latin if a choice between the two must be made; botany more useful than Longfellow's "Courtship of Miles Standish" or Ruskin's "Modern Painters." The study through zoology and entomology of the warfare of animal life in that township is more important to the tillers of the soil both as information and as a stimulus to mental growth than are the wars of Rameses II. or Alexander the Great, however important these latter may be. Some adequate knowledge of bacteriology must be of more service and, if cleanliness is next to godliness, of equal moral value to Webster's oration on Bunker Hill monument or Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice." The study of the application of science to agriculture and even the discussion of some of the improved methods of farming would be as much in place in a school of this kind as forensics.

All of these things which I have named and which I have found put down as a part of the curriculum of this rural school are excellent subjects to teach, especially for those who expect to become ministers, lawyers, teachers, bookkeepers, clerks, insurance agents, and in many of those vocations where people are popularly known to make a living by their wits. Let me repeat there is no living being that would not be better for having had this instruction. But is it not pitiable that there should be such an utter lack of comprehension of those fundamental truths which are responsible for the progress of the world? What will those young men think who have not been induced by their training or the advice of their teachers to leave the farm? Ten years from now when they have married and settled upon the farm will they think it is a pity? No, if they come to a just realization of the manner in which they have been handicapped in life by a lack of proper training they will not think it a pity, but they will think it a crime. These young girls when they have become mothers will cry out against a system of education which was designed to educate school teachers, which only a few of them can ever be, instead of educating homemakers, which most of them will be.

The laws of our state require very properly a certain educational qualification before a man or woman can become a school teacher, a lawyer, a doctor, or a druggist, and our schools have been, perhaps unconsciously, supplying the demands of this professional class at the expense of the great industrial classes which form the bulk and bulwark of our people. Nearly every college faculty and almost every man and woman connected with either portion of our educational system from the district school up is bending his or her efforts to shape, perhaps unconsciously again, the secondary and primary schools so as to feed the colleges. Frequently this is being done under the plea of giving culture. It is not culture, necessarily, but business, and it is a business in which the great mass of the people get the little end. That these professional classes should be educated, and well educated, no one can or wishes to deny, but it should not be done at the detriment of the bulk of our population.

But to return to our township high school. Why were Latin, higher mathematics, history, and literature well taught while chemistry, physics, botany, zoology, and entomology received little or no treatment? Because the principal of this school had been classically trained. He had a good training in the one class of subjects, practically none in the other. He knew practically nothing of the sciences, of their relations to the occupations of his patrons. When I tried to talk to him of the relations of the sciences to the farmers of his township that vacant stare came in his eyes that would have come into mine had he tried to converse with me in Greek. It was Greek to him. He had no conception

of it. I observed the students of this rural school. The dress of the young men especially was almost loud in its dudishness. Their ability to declaim and to sing was emphasized and their manners had been carefully coached. In other words, they had been trained so that they would have the appearance of the city bred boy and girl and could appear to advantage in what, in the cities, is known as society. These are very desirable attributes in every boy and girl and should be encouraged. But what a dreadfully thin veneer it is to stand the hard wear of every-day life, especially when put upon improperly seasoned lumber, and what a waste of good timber.

The contention of this paper is not so much that the curriculum of the schools should be changed as it is that the teachers who teach these schools should have some conception of the relation which the subjects which they teach bear to the occupations that their pupils will follow. The question I was constantly asked when I was a student in the high school and I suppose every other young marr is asked the same question, was, what was I going to do when I got through school? When I said I was going to be a farmer, my high school teacher said it was such a pity and my friends took turns in trying to persuade me to desist from my intentions. There was one man, however, who, while not advising me as to the occupation in life I should pursue, saw clearly that if I was determined to be a farmer I needed all the training the state system of education could afford. My father, therefore, suggested that I take a course in agriculture in the state university. When my teachers learned that I was going to college to study agriculture they smiled in a patronizing sort of a way and my school friends looked upon it as a mild sort of lunacy. When I arrived at the university I found a corps of most inspiring instructors but no great amount of company among the students who were studying agriculture in this great institution. Nor is it surprising that I found so few. No person teaching in the lower schools had ever had any instruction relating to agriculture. Few of them had ever known any one who had studied agriculture in a university, and most of them had never heard that it was possible to teach agriculture in a university. As the Hon, James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture, said recently: "Neither the family minister, lawyer, nor doctor, nor any other educated man to whom young men look for guidance, had ever studied agriculture." Is it remarkable that pupils who generally place implicit confidence in their teachers should be guided away from the farm under such conditions?

But if you will allow further personal allusion, why was I not deterred from the path I had chosen? Why did the importunities of my friends avail nothing? Was it pure obstinacy? I think not. When a boy as I worked with my father gathering the stones from the fields he gradually unfolded to me the manner in which these rocks had been formed. He pointed out the curious fossils contained therein. He traced the significance of these fossiliferous rocks to the changes in matter. As we hoed morning glories from the corn field he explained to me that the soil was nothing but the stones made fine and mixed with decaying vegetable matter. I can take you almost to the very spot on the old homestead where we were at work when this idea first fairly took hold of me. My brain seemed to expand with the thought. While we gathered and burned brush in the orchards my father would point out the various forms of insect life and explain to me the metamorphoses through which insects went and the warfare one upon another. As we planted forest trees upon the waste places of the farm to be cut by succeeding generations he explained to me the duties of man to the soil which he tilled; his stewardship therein, and the dependence of posterity upon the proper treatment of the soil.

Thus the son gradually came to see the relation of knowledge to agriculture and to comprehend some of those larger problems connected with man's habitation of this globe. If a man who never went to school a day after he was nine years of age can bring a lad between the ages of ten and fourteen while performing the most irksome work of the farm to some conception of the world about him, surely a school teacher can do the same thing in the school room while teaching the student reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and United States history, provided only he or she has some conception of these fundamental truths. While teaching geography the student may be taught the capital of every state in the union without knowing the meaning of either the word state or capital. Or the student may be taught something, first, of the character of his father's farm, next, the township, then his county, and so on in an ever widening circle. While studying United States history he may be taught that much of the prosperity of the world since the discovery of America is due to the addition of important food plants and to the use of iron and coal in the performance of the world's work, which is the truth, or he may be told the stories of John Smith and Pocahontas or similar interesting but questionable stories. While reading in the fourth or fifth reader the pupil may read, for example:

"Fair Freedom! let thy ensign wave,
Till stern Oppression finds a grave;
And let thy Eagle proudly soar,

Till Tyrant power is felt no more."

Or he might read this which has been prepared for a fourth reader for the rural schools:

"Chemists have found that all substances in the universe can be divided into simple elements. There are between sixty and seventy of these elements. Plants need only ten of them. Of the ten elements necessary to plant growth three are much the most abundant. These are carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. The carbon comes from the air. It enters the plant as a gas through the leaves. The carbon unites with the hydrogen and oxygen to make the starch and sugar and woody matter of plants. Starch, sugar, and woody fiber of plants form about nine out of every ten pounds of the dried plant. The hydrogen and oxygen which united with the carbon to make these substances comes from the water which the plant absorbs through its roots. With the exception of water only a small portion of the plant comes from the soil. If this were not true, around every tree that grows there would be a hole."

Even arithmetic may teach agriculture or money changing. Should I state to you the following problem: If five hundred dollars is let at six per cent. interest, how many dollars would have to be let at five per cent. interest to bring the same amount of money, you would answer six hundred dollars before I could finish the question. But suppose I ask: If an acre of corn produces twelve tons of ensilage, two-thirds of which is water, how many tons of corn fodder will the acre produce, provided the corn fodder is one-third water? Is that problem equally easy? The principles involved are precisely the same, the figures are equally easy and the results are much more important to the farmer who generally has an abundance of corn fodder but in common with most of humanity not over abundance of money. Why is this problem more difficult? Because you are accustomed to making the application of the principle in one case and not in the other. You were taught to do so when you attended the district school. The writers of arithmetic and the teachers of arithmetic understood that these principles had value in their application to borrowing and lending money but they did not see that they had any

special application to farming. As a teacher of agriculture in a university I am acompelled to teach students the applications of arithmetic to agriculture and dairy operations although the principles of arithmetic which are used may be perfectly familiar to them.

A worker in science whose name every one of my hearers would recognize should I mention it, said to me very recently: "The utter lack of information among what are called educated people of those larger but fundamental ideas which mean so much to mankind and relate so directly to the farmer's calling, is simply pitiable. The utterly foolish questions that are asked by these same people makes one sad when he thinks of it."

The importance of proper training to those who are going to engage in farming and other industrial occupations is tremendous. According to the census. of 1890 about thirty-two million people were engaged in gainful occupations. in the United States. Of this number less than one million or less than five per cent, were engaged in professions, while over eight millions or over forty per cent, were engaged on farms or gardens. There were in Ohio two hundred and eighty thousand farmers and gardeners. (This does not include farm laborers.) At the same time there were about five thousand clergymen, five thousand lawyers, seven thousand physicians, and twenty-five thousand teachers, three-fifths of whom are women and most of whom will become homemakers sooner or later. The average expectancy of a man who has reached the age of twenty-one is forty-one and one-half years. It follows from this that at least six thousand seven hundred and fifty persons will engage in farming during the year 1899 who never before engaged in farming as a gainful occupation. On the same basis there will be one hundred and twenty-five pulpits filled with new blood, one hundred and twenty-five initiates at the bar, and about one hundred and seventy-five new practitioners of medicine. About two hundred and fifty men and three hundred and seventy-five women will teach their first school. The question at this moment is not whether the six thousand seven hundred and fifty men shall be as well educated, although I believe they should be, as the few teachers, lawyers, doctors, and ministers, but whether the instruction which they do receive should be a direct preparation for the profession or whether there should be in their training some recognition of the life they are to follow.

No criticism is here intended of the school teacher. Grand results have been achieved by the school teacher in the past. Excellent results are being obtained in the present. During the year just past we have had a striking demonstration of the importance and effectiveness of our common school education. But the best possible results are not being obtained. Knowledge concerning the industries of life has been increasing by leaps and bounds. This knowledge has not reached the school room; at least not to an extent adequate to the situation.

Neither does the fault lie so much in our system of education as in our ideals. Our education has been that which was designed to make orators and writers; to make men whose influence was to be exerted through the written or spoken word. It was not designed to make Grants, Edisons, or Pasteurs, who have exerted their influence largely through action.

One of the bars to further advancement lies in the difficulty which besets the teacher, not the least of which is the inadequate compensation of rural school teachers. The Report of the Committee of Twelve on Rural Schools states that:

"In cities of the United States containing over eight thousand inhabitants there is expended over twenty dollars for each pupil in attendance, while in all other schools less than ten dollars per pupil is expended. It is evident that the first condition of good rural schools is a sufficiency of funds with which to provide them."