e a farmer.
While it is not necessary to be educated in schools in order to gain
knowledge, yet the schoolroom with all its limitations is usually the
most economical and most efficient method of acquiring certain forms of
knowledge essential to every successful man or woman. A farm-to-farm
canvass of a certain region of the state of New York discloses the fact
that farmers with college training are obtaining a higher income from
their farms than those whose school days ended with high school.
Similarly, those who have finished the high school are more prosperous
financially than those who never advanced beyond the grades. The
investigation showed, for example, that with the farmers under
observation the high school education was equivalent to $6,000 worth of
5% bonds. Farming is an occupation requiring keen observation, sound
judgment and accurate reasoning, all attributes which are strengthened
greatly by proper education. This is so true that many men, perhaps
most men, are forty before they have grasped the problems which the
truly successful farmer must solve.

A considerable part of the knowledge essential to success in any
pursuit is acquired by actually working at the occupation, or, as we
say, by practical experience. Some features of any occupation can be
obtained in no other way. A preliminary education may, however,
greatly reduce the time necessary to acquire even this practical
experience. For example, a course in shop work as taught in technical
high schools and colleges, requiring two hours a day for five months,
may shorten the time of apprenticeship by one or more years, in
acquiring the trade of carpenter or iron worker. In the same manner a
course in butter making, cheese making or floriculture, may shorten
the time required to obtain the necessary practical details by ten
months or even more. Eventually, also, the man thus trained will be
the better man.

If the industrial activities of the world be divided into farming,
mining, manufacturing, trade and transportation, it will be noted at
once that farming is the only one which deals with living things. In
fact, the definition of agriculture, in its broadest sense, is the
economic production of living things. The farmer is thus brought face
to face with some of the most difficult and intricate problems with
which the human race has to grapple. It is this fact that makes
farming, in some ways, the most uncertain as well as the most
fascinating occ