Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/366

360 made to train men for the social leadership the new régime demands? I see no answer except that the course must be made truly and broadly vocational, and consequently that large place must be given to social studies, and particularly to the concrete problems of government, industry and social life.

If we examine our agricultural course from this standpoint, we shall have to admit that it has the flaw common to most industrial courses. It is too technical. It is not truly vocational. It does not present the social view-point. It does not stimulate the student to social activity. It does not give him a foundation for intelligent social service when he shall go to the farm. He should study agricultural economics and rural sociology, both because rural society needs leaders and because, in the arming of the man, the knowledge of society's problems is just as vital as either expert information or personal culture.

4. To carry out the function of the agricultural college we need, finally, a vast enlargement of extension work among farmers. This work will not only be dignified by a standing in the college coordinate with research and the teaching of students, but it will rank as a distinct department, with a faculty of men whose chief business is to teach the people who can not come to the college. This department should manage farmers' institutes, carry on cooperative experiments, give demonstrations in new methods, conduct courses of reading, offer series of extension lectures, assist the schools in developing agricultural instruction, direct the work of rural young people's clubs, edit and distribute such compilations of practical information as now appear under the guise of experiment station bulletins, and eventually relieve the station of the bulk of its correspondence. Such a department will be prepared to incorporate into its work the economic, governmental and social problems of agriculture. It will give the farmers light upon taxation as well as upon tree-pruning. The rural school will have as much attention as corn-breeding. The subject of the market—the 'distributive half of farming,' as John M. Stahl calls it—will be given as much discussion as the subjects bearing upon production. We shall find here a most fertile field for work. The farmers are ready for this step. They have, as a rule, appreciated the real nature of the farm problem more fully than have our agricultural educators. Perhaps at times they have placed undue reliance upon legislation. Perhaps in periods of depression they have overweighed the economic pressure as against the lack of skilled farming. But the great body of farmers has rightly estimated the importance of the economic, political and social questions as related to their ultimate prosperity. In grange meetings, for example, the subjects which arouse greatest interest are such themes as taxation, the rural telephone, the country school, business cooperation. The explanation of all the farmers' movements is that the farmers