INDIANA FAEMEE.
Vol. VII.]
INDIANAPOLIS, MARCH, 1859.
[No. XII.
;taeati©Mllc
HOW SHALL THE FABMEB BE
EDUCATED?
■rsro.  1.
There is nothing connected with the
great educational interests of our country, more deplorably true, than that the
agricultural classes, in the matter of facilities for scientific and literary progress, are falling behind the mechanical,
the commercial, and professional. The
mechanic has his Mechanic's Institute,
with a fine library, illustrative apparatus,
scientific lectures and school of design;
the merchant his Commercial College,
and magnificent Mercantile Library—the
professional man his munificently endowed University, with medical, legal,
and theological departments appended—
and the youth of the cities have their
free Common Schools, High Schools,
and Night High Schools; but where are
the well-organized, Common Schools,the
Night High Schools, public libraries,
courses of scientific lectures, scientific
clubs and agricultural colleges, for the
farmer and the youth of thc rural districts ?
Now it cannot be argued that the interests ofthe farming classes are less important, or necessity for general intelligence or scieutific knowledge on their
part, less imperative; all this is so evident that even the half-thinking can
hardly fail to see it. Such reasoning
might have been considered valid fifty
years ago, when our great grand-fathers
supposed that farming involved only a
few plain principles, so simple in themselves, and so perfectly easy of application, that the farmer, "though a fool,
Vol. VII—26.
need not err therein." Nay, within our
own recollection,good reader, if the shadow of your days approaches the noon-
mark of life, the term science of farming
was uncoined—lying in the rough ore of
human language and human history,
waiting for thc genius ofa Davy, a Chap-
tal, Boussingalt and Liebig to mint and
give it current value among men.
Many of you remember distinctly the
"bottom field" where your fathers planted corn for twenty years without interruption, and without seeming to notice
that during that time the product had
fallen from 100 to 50 bushels per acre—
the old " Bull plow," with wooden mould-
board, a few degrees in advance of the
Morocco or Roman iron-shod, forked
stick—and the old barn, conveniently
located on the bank of the stream, so that
all troublesome manure might be thrown
into its waters, and thus got rid of without further expense I It may be—no,
we will not insult you by the supposition
that p>ossibly some of you have neighbors
who "farm it" in the same style, even to
this day, when the light of science has
scarcely left a nook or corner in the
whole civilized worid unilluminated.
Still there arc a few people, even in Wisconsin, no doubt, who think all this task
about scientific farming is a humbug—
who honestly believe that no improvement can be made in the practice of thein
fathers—and who are quite as much opposed to tho innovations of the Farmer;
as they were to canals, steamboats, and;
railroads sucessively. We are charitable enough, however, to believe that tha-
number of such is proportionally small,,
and is every day growing smaller. The-
demonstrations of science are so rapidly
growing in number and increasing in*
strength, that soon the rejection of its
helps will be considered proof positive of"