fully
accomplished in many cases, and is arousing the greatest interest and
meeting with gratifying success. We shall within ten years have a new
generation of young men and women ready for college who have had their
eyes opened as never before to the beauties of nature and to the
fascination there is in the farmer's task of using nature for his own
advantage.

But when we have increased the attendance at our agricultural colleges
tenfold; when we have hundreds of agricultural schools teaching
thousands of our youth the fundamentals of agriculture; when each rural
school in our broad land is instilling into the minds of children the
nearness and beauty of nature and is teaching the young eyes to see and
the young ears to hear what God hath wrought in his many works of land
and sea and sky, in soil, and plant, and living animal--even when that
happy day shall dawn will we find multitudes of men and women on our
farms still untouched by agricultural education. These people must be
reached. The mere fact that their school days are forever behind them is
no reason why they shall not receive somewhat of the inspiration and
guidance that flow from the schools. So we have an imperative demand for
the extension of agricultural teaching out from the schools to the farm
community. The school thus not only sheds its light upon those who are
within its gates, but sets out on the beautiful errand of carrying this
same light into every farm home in the land. This work is being done
today by thousands of farmers' institutes, by demonstrations in spraying
and in many other similar lines, by home-study courses and
correspondence courses, by co-operative experiments, by the distribution
of leaflets and bulletins, by lectures at farmers' gatherings, by
traveling schools of dairying. These methods and others like them are
being invoked for the purpose of bringing to the farmers in their homes
and neighborhoods some of the benefits that the colleges and schools
bestow upon their pupils.

We have seen something of the need of agricultural education, of the
kind of education required, and of the means used to secure it. Does not
this discussion at least show the supreme importance of the question?
Will not the farmers rally themselves to and league themselves with the
men who are trying to forward the best interests of the farm? Shall we
not all work together for the betterment both of the farm and of the
farmer?

CHAPTER VII

FAR