arting-point and the end of agriculture, it is true. But the lone
farmer is an anomaly, either as a cause or as a product, as the lone man
is everywhere. As an effective cause we must have co-operating
individuals, and as an end we desire an improved community and a
higher-grade _class_ of farmers.

The farm question then is a social question. Valuable as are the
contributions of science to the problems of soil and plant and animal,
the ultimate contribution comes from the development of improved men. So
the real end is not merely to utilize each acre to its utmost, nor to
provide cheap food for the people who do not farm, nor yet to render
agriculture industrially strong. The gravest and most far-reaching
consideration is the social and patriotic one of endeavoring to develop
and maintain an agricultural class which represents the very best type
of American manhood and womanhood, to make the farm home the ideal home,
to bring agriculture to such a state that the business will always
attract the keen and the strong who at the same time care more for home
and children and state and freedom than for millions. In other words,
the maintenance of the typical American farmer--the man who is
essentially middle class, who is intelligent, who keeps a good standard
of living, educates his children, serves his country, owns his
medium-sized farm, and who at death leaves a modest estate--the
maintenance of the typical American farmer is the real agricultural
problem.

If this analysis is a correct one, it will vitally affect our plans for
agricultural training. The student will be taught not only soil physics,
but social psychology. He will learn not only the action of bacteria in
milk fermentation, but the underlying causes of the social ferment among
the farmers of the last thirty years. He will concern himself with the
value of farmers' organizations as well as with the co-operating
influences of high-bred corn and high-bred steers. The function and
organization of the rural school will be as serious a problem to him as
the building and management of the co-operative creamery. The country
church and its career will interest him fully as much as does the latest
successful device for tying milch cows in the stable. He will want to
get at the kernel of the political questions that confront agriculture
just as fully and thoroughly as he wishes to master the formulae for
commercial fertilizers. No man will have acquired an adequate