family of the same spot. Cultivated lands have changed hands as often as
every twenty-five years from the settlement of the country. The
capacity of our soils to produce, when laboriously and systematically
cultivated, has not been ascertained; there has been no accumulation of
experience by families, and but little by the public; and the effort, in
many sections, has been to draw as much as possible from the land, while
little or nothing was returned to it. Farming, as a whole, has not been
a system of cultivation, which implies improvement, but a process of
exhaustion. It has been easier for the farmer, though, perhaps, not as
economical, if all the elements necessary to a correct opinion could be
combined, to exchange his worn-out lands for fresh soils, than to adopt
an improving system of agriculture. The present has been consulted; the
future has been disregarded. As the half-civilized hunters of the pampas
of Buenos Ayres make indiscriminate slaughter of the myriads of wild
cattle that roam over the unfenced prairies of the south, and preserve
the hides only for the commerce and comfort of the world, so we have
clutched from nature whatever was in sight or next at hand, regardless
of the actual and ultimate wrong to physical and vegetable life; and, as
the pioneers of a better civilization now gather up the bones long
neglected and bleaching under tropical suns and tropical rains, and by
the agency of trade, art, and industry, extort more wealth from them
than was originally derived from the living animals, so we shall find
that worn-out lands, when subjected to skilful, careful, scientific
husbandry, are quite as profitable as the virgin soils, which, from the
day of the migration into the Connecticut valley to the occupancy of the
Missouri and the Kansas, have proved so tempting to our ancestors and to
us. But there has been some philosophy, some justice, and considerable
necessity, in the course that has been pursued. Subsistence is the first
desire; and, in new countries where forests are to be felled, dwellings
erected, public institutions established, roads and bridges built,
settlers cannot be expected, in the cultivation of the land, to look
much beyond the present moment. And they are entitled to the original
fertility of the soil. Europe passed through the process of settlement
and exhaustion many centuries ago. Her recovery has been the work of
centuries,--ours may be accomplished in a few years, even within the
limits of a single life. The fact from which an improving system of
agriculture must proceed is apparent in the northern and central
Atlantic states, and is, in a measure, appreciated in the West. We have
all heard that certain soils were inexhaustible. The statement was first
made of the valley of the Connecticut, then of the Genesee country, then
of Ohio, then of Illinois, and occasionally we now hear similar
statements of Kansas, or California, or the valley of the Willamette. In
the nature of things these statements were erroneous. The idea of soil,
in reason and in the use of the word, contains the idea of exhaustion.
Soil is not merely the upper stratum of the earth; it is a substance
which possesses the power, under certain circumstances, of giving up
essential properties of its own for the support of vegetable and
ultimately of animal life. What it gives up it loses, and to the extent
of its loss it is exhausted. It is no more untrue to say that the great
cities of the world have not, in their building, exhausted the forests
and the mines to any extent, than to say that the annual abundant
harvests of corn and wheat have not, in any degree, exhausted the
prairies and bottom lands of the West. Some lands may be exhausted for
particular crops in a single year; others in five years, others in ten,
while others may yield undiminished returns for twenty, fifty, or even a
hundred years. But it is plain that annual cropping without rotation,
and without compensation by nature or art, must finally deprive the soil
of the required elements. Nor should we deceive ourselves by considering
only those exceptions whose existence is due to the fact that nature
makes compensation for the loss. Annual or occasional irrigation with
rich deposits,--as upon the Nile and the Connecticut,--allowing the
land to lie fallow, rotation of crops and the growth of wood, are so
many expedients and provisions by which nature increases the
productiveness of the earth. Nor is a great depth of soil, as two, five,
ten, or twenty feet, any security against its ultimate impoverishment.
Only a certain portion is available. It has been found in the case of
coal-mines which lie at great depths, that they are, for the present,
valueless; and we cannot attach much importance to soil that is twenty
feet below the surface. Neither cultivation nor vegetation can go beyond
a certain depth; and wherever vegetable life exists, its elements are
required and appropriated. Great depth of soil is desirable; but, with
our present knowledge and means of culture, it furnishes no security
against ultimate exhaustion.
The fact that all soils are exhaustible establishes the necessity for
agricultural education, by whose aid the processes of impoverishment may
be limited in number and diminished in force; and the realization of
this fact by the public generally is the only justification necessary
for those who advocate the immediate application of means to the
proposed end.
And, gentlemen, if you will allow a festive day to be marred by a single
word of criticism, I feel constrained to say, that a great obstacle to
the increased usefulness, further elevation, and higher respectability,
of agriculture, is in the body of farmers themselves. And I assume this
to be so upon the supposition that agriculture is not a cherished
pursuit in many farmers' homes; that the head of the family often
regards his life of labor upon the land as a necessity from which he
would willingly escape; that he esteems other pursuits as at once less
laborious, more profitable, and more honorable, than his own; that
children, both sons and daughters, under the influence of parents, both
father and mother, receive an education at home, which neither school,
college, nor newspaper, can counteract, that leads them to abandon the
land for the store, the shop, the warehouse, the professions, or the
sea.
The reasonable hope of establishing a successful system of agricultural
education is not great where such notions prevail.
Agriculture is not to attain to true practical dignity by the borrowed
lustre that eminent names, ancient and modern, may have lent to it, any
more than the earth itself is warmed and made fruitful by the aurora
borealis of an autumn night. Our system of public instruction, from the
primary school to the college, rests mainly upon the public belief in
its importance, its possibility, and its necessity. It is easy on a
professional holiday to believe in the respectability of agriculture;
but is it a living sentiment, controlling your conduct, and inspiring
you with courage and faith in your daily labor? Does it lead you to
contemplate with satisfaction the prospect that your son is to be a
farmer also, and that your daughter is to be a farmer's wife? These, I
imagine, are test questions which not all farmers nor farmers' wives can
answer in the affirmative. Else, why the custom among farmers' sons of
making their escape, at the earliest moment possible, from the labors
and restraints of the farm? Else, why the disposition of the farmer's
daughter to accept other situations, not more honorable, and in the end
not usually more profitable, than the place of household aid to the
business of the home? How, then, can a system of education be prosperous
and efficient, when those for whom it is designed neither respect their
calling nor desire to pursue it? You will not, of course, imagine that I
refer, in these statements, to all farmers; there are many exceptions;
but my own experience and observation lead me to place confidence in the
fitness of these remarks, speaking generally of the farmers of New
England. It is, however, true, and the statement of the truth ought not
to be omitted, that the prevalent ideas among us are much in advance of
what they were ten years ago. In what has been accomplished we have
ground for hope, and even security for further advancement.
I look, then, first and chiefly to an improved home culture, as the
necessary basis of a system of agricultural education. Christian
education, culture, and life, depend essentially upon the influences of
home; and we feel continually the importance of kindred influences upon
our common school system.
It will not, of course, be wise to wait, in the establishment of a
system of agricultural education, until we are satisfied that every
farmer is prepared for it; in the beginning sufficient support may be
derived from a small number of persons, but in the end it must be
sustained by the mass of those interested. Other pursuits and
professions must meet the special claims made upon them, and in the
matter of agricultural education they cannot be expected to do more than
assent to what the farmers themselves may require.
An important part of a system of agricultural education has been, as it
seems to me, already established. I speak of our national, state,
county, and town associations for the promotion of agriculture. The
first three may educate the people through their annual fairs, by their
publications, and by the collection and distribution of rare seeds,
plants, and animals, that are not usually within reach of individual
farmers. By such means, and others less noticeable, these agencies can
exert a powerful influence upon the farmers of the country; but their
thorough, systematic education must be carried on at home. And for local
and domestic education I think we must rely upon our public schools,
upon town clubs or associations of farmers, and upon scientific men who
may be appointed by the government to visit the towns, confer with the
people, and receive and communicate information upon the agricultural
resources and defects of the various localities. It will be observed
that in this outline of a plan of education I omit the agricultural
college. This omission is intentional, and I will state my reasons for
it. I speak, however, of the present; the time may come when such an
institution will be needed. In Massachusetts, Mr. Benjamin Bussey has
made provision for a college at Roxbury, and Mr. Oliver Smith has made
similar provision for a college at Northampton; but these bequests will
not be available for many years. In England, Ireland, Scotland, France,
Belgium, Prussia, Russia, Austria, and the smaller states of Europe,
agricultural schools and colleges have been established; and they appear
to be the most numerous where the ignorance of the people is the
greatest. England has five colleges and schools, Ireland sixty-three,
while Scotland has only a professorship in each of her colleges at
Aberdeen and Edinburgh. In France, there are seventy-five agricultural
schools; but in seventy of them--called inferior schools--the
instruction is a compound of that given in our public schools and the
discipline of a good farmer upon his land, with some special attention
to agricultural reading and farm accounts. Such schools are not desired
and would not be patronized among us. When an agricultural school is
established, it must be of a higher grade,--it must take rank with the
colleges of the country. President Hitchcock, in his report, published
in 1851, states that six professors would be required; that the first
outlay would be sixty-seven thousand dollars, and that the annual
expense would be six thousand and two hundred dollars. By these
arrangements and expenditures he contemplates the education of one
hundred students, who are to pay annually each for tuition the sum of
forty dollars. It was also proposed to connect an agricultural
department with several of the existing academies, at an annual expense
of three thousand dollars more. These estimates of cost seem low, nor do
I find in this particular any special objection to the recommendation
made by the commissioners of the government; any other scheme is likely
to be quite as expensive in the end.
My chief objection is, that such a plan is not comprehensive enough, and
cannot, in a reasonable time, sensibly affect the average standard of
agricultural learning among us. The graduation of fifty students a year
would be equal to one in a thousand or fifteen hundred of the farmers of
the state; and in ten years there would not be one professionally
educated farmer in a hundred. We are not, of course, to overlook the
indirect influence of such a school, through its students annually sent
forth: the better modes of culture adopted by them would, to some
extent, be copied by others; nor are we to overlook the probability of a
prejudice against the institution and its graduates, growing out of the
republican ideas of equality prevailing among us. But the struggle
against mere prejudice would be an honorable struggle, if, in the hour
of victory, the college could claim to have reformed and elevated
materially the practices and ideas of the farmers of the country. I fear
that even victory under such circumstances would not be complete
success. An institution established in New England must look to the
existing peculiarities of our country, rather than venture at once upon
the adoption of schemes that may have been successful elsewhere. Here
every farmer is a laborer himself, employing usually from one to three
hands, and they are often persons who look to the purchase and
cultivation of a farm on their own account; while in England the master
farmer is an overseer rather than a laborer. The number of men in Europe
who own land or work it on their own account is small; the number of
laborers whose labors are directed by the proprietors and farmers is
quite large. Under these circumstances, if the few are educated, the
work will go successfully on; while here, our agricultural education
ought to reach the great body of those who labor upon the land. Will a
college in each state answer the demand for agricultural education now
existing? Is it safe in any country, or in any profession or pursuit, to
educate a few, and leave the majority to the indirect influence of the
culture thus bestowed? And is it philosophical, in this country, where
there is a degree of personal and professional freedom such as is
nowhere else enjoyed, to found a college or higher institution of
learning upon the general and admitted ignorance of the people in the
given department? or is it wiser, by elementary training and the
universal diffusion of better ideas, to make the establishment of the
college the necessity of the culture previously given? Every new school,
not a college, makes the demand for the college course greater than it
was before; and the advance made in our public schools increases the
students in the colleges and the university. We build from the primary
school to the college; and without the primary school and its
dependents,--the grammar, high school, and academy,--the colleges would
cease to exist. This view of education supports the statement that an
agricultural college is not the foundation of a system of agricultural
training, but a result that is to be reached through a preliminary and
elementary course of instruction. What shall that course be? I say,
first, the establishment of town or neighborhood societies of farmers
and others interested in agriculture. These societies ought to be
auxiliary to the county societies, and they never can become their
rivals or enemies unless they are grossly perverted in their management
and purposes. As such societies must be mutual and voluntary in their
character, they can be established in any town where there are twenty,
ten, or even five persons who are disposed to unite together. Its object
would, of course, be the advancement of practical agriculture; and it
would look to theories and even to science as means only for the
attainment of a specified end. The exercises of such societies would
vary according to the tastes and plans of the members and directors; but
they would naturally provide for discussions and conversations among
themselves, lectures from competent persons, the establishment of a
library, and for the collection of models and drawings of domestic
animals, models of varieties of fruit, specimens of seeds, grasses, and
grains, rocks, minerals, and soils. The discussions and conversations
would be based upon the actual observation and experience of the
members; and agriculture would at once become better understood and more
carefully practised by each person who intended to contribute to the
exercises of the meeting.
Until the establishment of agricultural journals, there were no means by
which the results of individual experience could be made known to the
mass of farmers; and, even now, men of the largest experience are not
the chief contributors.
Wherever a local club exists, it is always possible to compare the
knowledge of the different members; and the results of such comparison
may, when deemed desirable, be laid before the public at large. It is
also in the power of such an organization thoroughly and at once to test
any given experiment. The attention of this section of the country has
been directed to the culture of the Chinese sugar-cane; and merchants,
economists, and statesmen, as well as the farmers themselves, are
interested in the speedy and satisfactory solution of so important an
industrial problem. Had the attention of a few local societies in
different parts of New England been directed to the culture, with
special reference to its feasibility and profitableness, a definite
result might have been reached the present year. The growth of flax,
both in the means of cultivation and in economy, is a subject of great
importance. Many other crops might also be named, concerning which
opposite, not to say vague, opinions prevail. The local societies may
make these trials through the agency of individual members better than
they can be made by county and state societies, and better than they can
usually be made upon model or experimental farms. It will often happen
upon experimental farms that the circumstances do not correspond to the
condition of things among the farmers. The combined practical wisdom of
such associations must be very great; and I have but to refer to the
published minutes of the proceedings of the Concord Club to justify this
statement in its broadest sense. The meetings of such a club have all
the characteristics of a school of the highest order. Each member is at
the same time a teacher and a pupil. The meeting is to the farmer what
the court-room is to the lawyer, the hospital to the physician, and the
legislative assembly to the statesman.
Moot courts alone will not make skilful lawyers; the manikin is but an
indifferent teacher of anatomy; and we may safely say that no statesman
was ever made so by books, schools, and street discussions, without
actual experience in some department of government.
It is, of course, to be expected that an agricultural college would have
the means of making experiments; but each experiment could be made only
under a single set of circumstances, while the agency of local
societies, in connection with other parts of the plan that I have the
honor diffidently to present, would convert at once a county or a state
into an experimental farm for a given time and a given purpose. The
local club being always practical and never theoretical, dealing with
things always and never with signs, presenting only facts and never
conjectures, would, as a school for the young farmer, be quite equal,
and in some respects superior, to any that the government can establish.
But, it may be asked, will you call that a school which is merely an
assembly of adults without a teacher? I answer that technically it is
not a school, but that in reality such an association is a school in the
best use of the word. A school is, first, for the development of powers
and qualities whose germs already exist; then for the acquisition of
knowledge previously possessed by others; then for the prosecution of
original inquiries and investigations. The associations of which I speak
would possess all these powers, and contemplate all these results; but
that their powers might be more efficient, and for the advancement of
agriculture generally, it seems to me fit and proper for the state to
appoint scientific and practical men as agents of the Board of
Agriculture, and lecturers upon agricultural science and labor. If an
agricultural college were founded, a farm would be required, and at
least six professors would be necessary. Instead of a single farm, with
a hundred young men upon it, accept gratuitously, as you would no doubt
have opportunity, the use of many farms for experiments and repeated
trials of crops, and, at the same time, educate, not a hundred only, but
many thousand young men, nearly as well in theory and science, and much
better in practical labor, than they could be educated in a college. Six
professors, as agents, could accomplish a large amount of necessary
work; possibly, for the present, all that would be desired. Assume, for
this inquiry, that Massachusetts contains three hundred agricultural
towns; divide these towns into sections of fifty each; then assign one
section to each agent, with the understanding that his work for the
year is to be performed in that section, and then that he is to be
transferred to another. By a rotation of appointments and a succession
of labors, the varied attainments of the lecturers would be enjoyed by
the whole commonwealth. But, it may be asked, what, specifically stated,
shall the work of the agents be? Only suggestions can be offered in
answer to this inquiry. An agent might, in the summer season, visit his
fifty towns, and spend two days in each. While there, he could ascertain
the kinds of crops, modes of culture, nature of soils, practical
excellences, and practical defects, of the farmers; and he might also
provide for such experiments as he desired to have made. It would,
likewise, be in his power to give valuable advice, where it might be
needed, in regard to farming proper, and also to the erection and repair
of farm-buildings. I am satisfied that a competent agent would, in this
last particular alone, save to the people a sum equal to the entire cost
of his services. After this labor was accomplished, eight months would
remain for the preparation and delivery of lectures in the fifty towns
previously visited. These lectures might be delivered in each town, or
the agent might hold meetings of the nature of institutes in a number of
towns centrally situated. In either case, the lectures would be at once
scientific and practical; and their practical character would be
appreciated in the fact that a judicious agent would adapt his lectures
to the existing state of things in the given locality. This could not be
done by a college, however favorably situated, and however well
accomplished in the material of education. It is probable that the
lectures would be less scientific than those that would be given in a
college; but when their superior practical character is considered, and
when we consider also that they would be listened to by the great body
of farmers, old and young, while those of the college could be enjoyed
by a small number of youth only, we cannot doubt which would be the most
beneficial to the state, and to the cause of agriculture in the country.
An objection to the plan I have indicated may be found in the belief
that the average education of the farmers is not equal to a full
appreciation of the topics and lectures to be presented. My answer is,
that the lecturers must meet the popular intelligence, whatever it is.
Nothing is to be assumed by the teacher; it is his first duty to
ascertain the qualifications of his pupils. I am, however, led to the
opinion that the schools of the country have already laid a very good
basis for practical instruction in agriculture; and, if this be not so,
then an additional argument will be offered for the most rapid advance
possible in our systems of education. In any event, it is true that the
public schools furnish a large part of the intellectual culture given in
the inferior and intermediate agricultural schools of Europe.