Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/364

358 and practically nothing has been done in the more purely social questions. Here is a great untilled field. How the various farm industries have developed, a comprehensive study of the agricultural market, the relation of transportation to the industry, the tendencies as to centralization of farms and tenant-farming, the sociological questions of rural illiteracy, pauperism, insanity, health, education, the effects of rural life upon character, religious life in the country—a hundred subjects of importance in the solution of the farm problem are almost virgin soil for the scientific investigator. It is the business of the agricultural colleges to assist, if not to lead, in such work of research. It is work that must be done before the social phases of agricultural education can be fully developed.

When we come to the course of study, we face a question difficult for some colleges because the agricultural curriculum is already overcrowded. I have not time to discuss this practical administrative question. I believe, however, that it can be worked out. What I wish to emphasize is the idea that in every agricultural course the social problems of the farmers shall have due attention. We should not permit a person to graduate in such a course unless he has made a fairly adequate study of the history and status of agriculture, of the governmental problems that have special bearing upon agricultural progress, of such questions in agricultural economics as markets, transportation, business cooperation, and of such phases of rural sociology as farmers' organizations, the country church, rural and agricultural education, and the conditions and movements of the rural population. For the college can not carry out the purpose we have ascribed to it, unless these subjects are given an important place in the course of study. We talk about the work of the college in training leaders, usually meaning by leaders men who are expert specialists or possibly farmers of extraordinary skill. Do we realize that the greatest need of American agriculture to-day is its need of social leadership? Nothing can be more imperative than that the agricultural college shall send out to the farms both men and women who have not only the capacity to win business success, but who also have the social vision, who are moved to be of service to the farm community, and who have the training which will enable them to take intelligent leadership in institute, school, church, grange, and in all movements for rural progress. Upon the college is thrust the responsibility of training men and women to understand the whole rural problem and from the vantage ground of successful farming to be able to lead the way toward a higher status for all farmers.

Possibly the argument for introducing rural social science into the agricultural course is chiefly a sociological one. But there is also involved a pedagogical question of most profound significance. For