Farm development; an introductory book in agriculture, including a discussion of soils, selecting & planning farms, subduing the fields, drainage, irrigation, roads, fences, together with introductory chapters concerning farm business, and the relations of general science to agriculture

Front matter

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Preface

This l)Ook was prepared from notes used in giving instruction to classes in tlie Agricultural High School — of secondary grade — of the University of Minnesota.

he students were nearly all from farm homes and nearly all expected to return to the country to live. Their needs, and the point of view in compiling this book, are those of the common farmer. In editing these notes an effort has been made to adapt the text to the agricultural high school, to the consolidated rural and village school, and even to advanced classes in the rural district school, and to the needs of the farmer's home library. Since no attempt is here made more than to introduce the several subjects, the farmer or pupil reading this book who wishes to pursue the subject in detail should seek advice of the State agricultural college and the Department of Agriculture as to the best up-to-date available literature published b} public and ]jrivate agencies.

The chapters dealing with rural engineering" are designed to give to the farmer a general explanation of drainage, road making, etc., for his own use rather than to train him for service in engineering. The engineer's point of view is onl}' incidental, and the rural engineer's interest will hQ mainly confined to the practical suggestions. Very helpful aid in revising the manuscript has been rendered l)y my associates, Messrs. Andrew Boss, C. P. Bull, John Thompson, William G. Smith, John G. Haney, E. C. Parker, PI. H. Mowry and Maurice O. "Eldridge.

W. M. HAYS.

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Table Of Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Preface iii

I Introduction I

Chapter I Introduction

Agricultural science and art deal with the production, from the soil, of foods, clothing, wood and other useful materials. Many of the natural sciences have a theoretical and a practical bearing on this greatest of the productive industries ; and the arts which have a useful relation to farming are numerous and varied. In no other vocation are the sciences and the arts so extensively and intimately interwoven.

While some persons with comparatively little book learning make money by farming, there is no other vocation in which there is so much useful and interesting knowledge that applies directly to the business and to the home. Differing from any other vocation, the business and the home are here a unit ; and the family-sized farm, the " family farm," is our most important business, educational, social, and racial institution. In no other element of our national organization is Americanism so well exemplified ; its democracy is well-nigh complete. None other of our institutions is more worthy of being copied by the people of other countries, because the separate family farm, supplemented by the consolidated " farm school," uniting the apprenticeship work of the farm and the home with the general and technical work of the farm school, will provide the best conditions under which to develop superior races of men and women. The farmer and the farm home maker need to exercise great wisdom in selecting, from the mass

2 FARM DKVELOPMExNfT

of daily experience and from book knowledge, practical facts and theories which are of the highest importance in acquiring success under his or her environment.

Home training. — Most of the plain farm arts, as plowing, sowing, harvesting, feeding, breeding, buying and selling, and much c^f the mechanical work of the farm. are best learned by e\eryday practice in the business. This is also the case with the home arts, as cooking, sewing, house decorating, home making, entertaining and character building. A\'ithout practical experience the would-be farmer is not adept in selecting the practical methods and theories from the great mass of available thought and adapting them to his conditions. , Those who have more theoretical knowledge than practical experience are not inclined to be conservative in adopting new theories and new practices; on the other hand, those who lack training in scientific theory are not usually capable of working out new things of practical importance. A combination of theoretical and practical knowledge is necessary for the best success in any line of effort; and in no line of business is this more true than in farming.

Technical and scientific as well as practical knowledge is of daily and yearly value in the home and on the farm ; and in these progressive times every person should be constantly in the attitude of an incpiirer, a student. All the agencies yielding useful information should be utilized. Agricultural periodicals, books on agricultural subjects, speeches at farmers' institutes and other farmers' meetings are sources of much information regarding farm life and farm business. Much of the best information and many theories of farm and farm home management may be acquired by young farmers from iheir parents and from intelligent folk with whom they associate. Consultation with those who have made a success of any special line of home or farm development

INTRODUCTION 3

is probably the most important source of information and advice. Personal friends, to whom one can trust his plans for suggestive and curative advice, are most important agencies to l)e employed with conservative freedom by farmers whose isolation makes necessary an effort to measure their plans through the minds of others. Giving suggestions to a friend is one of the opportunities for doing good ; and every true man and woman sacredly keeps confidences given while another is asking advice. Technical education in agriculture. — Schools to promote the professions have long been organized. Alore recently, schools for the business vocations and for the mechanical trades are being established ; schools of agriculture, which earlier proved difificult of development, ha\e in recent years been made to succeed, and schools of household economics have been even later in their development. Schools designed to give instruction in agriculture and farm home making have as wonderful possibilities in building up rural business and country life as have schools of medicine in advancing the cause of preventive and curative medicine. Schools which teach agricultin^e are most useful to those persons who are so fortunate as to receive the advantages they afford before settling down to life's business of home making and farming. These schools have also a very great value in giving dignity, profit, and comfort to farmers as a class, and in providing more and cheaper farm products for all classes of people. These schools teach the underl3nng principles which govern farm and home management and add to the practical knowledge which every farm Ijoy or girl ac(|uires in youth. Many of the erroneous notions gained from the experiences of one isolated farm, or from ])ractical people who sometimes have wrong theories, are here corrected. By coming in daily contact with able teachers and bright fellow-students, the boy or girl from the farm is enabled to obtain a

4 FARM DEVELOPMEXT

broader view of the questions of life and business. At the same time, the use of the naturalist's microscope, the chemist's crucible and balance, and other instruments of precision, trains the student's eye so that he sees and appreciates many things on the farm which previously had little or no meaning. The daily routine of class work, of note and essay writing, of searching for references, of recitation in class, and of work in the literary societies, places the mind of the pupil on a new plane. He returns home with new power to do the thinking necessary to higher development in farm life.

The young man gains dexterity in the arts of carpentry, blacksmithing, dairying, breeding, feeding, and in the raising and handling of forage, grain, garden and other crops ; the young woman becomes more expert in the arts of cookery, sewing and home keeping; while both gain added power in character building in the home and in the community. Broader views of farm planning, farm improvement, and farm management are also acquired. The mind is made more active and more accurate; formal processes of figuring and planning and of doing things are learned ; the books from which to seek specific information are made known ; and at the same time the hand is trained to execute work with greater precision. Even systematic military and jjhysical training are provided by the state in its local and general schools which instruct in agriculture, thus giving the students complete body development. By doing things w^ith hand and mind under a trained expert, a student learns to do them accurately and to think clearly and ra])idly. Dealing both with things and with printed pages, the mind does not lose its originality and versatility, as when the education deals only with the words of books.

Education consists largely in the training of the judgment. Practical experience in life gives more natural training than does attending school. But the intense

INTRODUCTION 5

training of the school — the training' to think consecutively and logically, and to do things well under supervision — the establishment of ideals, and the storing of a broad knowledge, make the school a necessary part of a person's experience. The education of practical experience and of the school must be combined to produce the well-rounded man or woman. The more practical education of the industrial and technical school subjects trains the judgment to deal with things. The modern stock judging or corn judging class, for example, gives the mind a grasp on the practical differences in values which make wealth, and gives the man a confidence in himself and an ability to do things as well as to think things. " Instruction in judging is closely akin to training the common sense, and is the highest class of pedagogy."

The Nation and the States have come to recognize that the business of farming is peculiarly aided by vocational education in agriculture and home economics. Since the people of the farm are somewhat isolated, it is especially important that young people who are to be the future farmers should go to schools where they can make farming and farm home making a study under a faculty of strong technical teachers, and where they can have acquaintance and experience among large numbers of people.

It is wise economy on the part of the State to establish schools where a large percentage of the young farmers can get a good education in agriculture and home making along with schooling in the general subjects. By increasing the ability of the individual to make his work produce more, the State gains a larger income, and the individual and national life become richer and more highly developed. The 3'oung men or the young women who spend a few years in the technical study of those practical things with which they must deal every day of then- lives, get much benefit from the means expended

O FARM DEVELOPMENT

by the State for agricultural schools, and in turn the}^ may be. and are, more useful to their neighboring citizens and to the State.

The fact that, for every dollar the student spends for Iiis education, the State and the Nation pay another, puts him in debt to the country; and he should show profound gratitude by being a more successful, a more useful and a more public-spirited citizen. Agriculture demands the best exercise of both the brain and muscle of the youth, and thus aids in building up strong character. Agriculture should be fostered ; it should be aided to the utmost so that our lands, growing in productiveness, and the inherited and acquired character of our country people may continue to be the enduring foundations of the republic.

Our statesmen and educators should co-operate in devising a system of country life education which will enable those who work the land to own it in farms of family size. Though it might appear that the large estate with transient or semi-peasant labor would produce food and clothing for the Nation more cheaply than does the family farm, folks are the land's supreme product; and when the land is divided off into family farms, needing only occasional outside help, the production per square mile of farm homes and of high-type Americans is greatly increased.

The larger values per acre of farm lands, the larger income per acre and per farm worker, the better investment in farm buildings, fences, machinery and live stock, all being made possible and increased by modern discovery, invention and organization, and the larger production of better farm folks, make possible any reasonable expenditure for education in country life subjects. The system of schools outlined above will increase taxes on land and on personal property. It will, however, take off such a load of ignorance, of wasted opportunity, of

INTRODUCTION /

poor crops, of unprofitable animals, of loss in marketing", of political inefficiency, of undeveloped social enjoyments, and of unlovely country homes, that its annual cost will more than be made up every quarter of a year. America can no more afford to do without an efficient system of education, adapted to those who are to manage its farms and its farm homes, which will bring- to the farmers the full benefit of modern knowledge, facilities and organization, than it could afford to discard modern railways.

Institutions devoted to education for country life. — In 1862, during the Civil war, the Congress of the United States took two important steps to organize technical education in agriculture. The first provided for institutions to build up a body of scientific knowledge of agriculture : to serve both as a general fund of information to all who farm and as the substance of instruction in agriculture in schools. The second provided for a system of schools especially devoted to country life. Along with the latter, provisions were also made for education in mechanic arts, the combined work being provided for in a State college of agriculture and the mechanic arts in each State; and education in home economics has grown up in these institutions along with education in the productive industries.

The scientific institutions which have grown out of the first of these acts of Congress are the United States Department of Agriculture and about fifty State agricultural experiment stations. The State stations were not org^anized till later, but they are a part of the same movement, and part of their support is annually appropriated by Congress. These institutions employ thousands of men engaged in research in all phases of agriculture. Many of the states have appropriated money for branch stations, and the United States Department of Agriculture also has established outposts for research under its control. In this way the State and the Nation are able to study farm management and many special questions relating to farming, on each large area of definite kind of soil and in each climatic and agricultural area. All the leading countries of the world are conducting agricultural researches, though no other has so extensive an organization as the United States. In the nineteenth century, there was spent in this way. in the world, probably $25,000,000, and appropriations for this purpose are being so rapidly increased that there will have been spent more than twice that amount in the first decade of the twentieth century. By the time farm youths born in 1900 are in middle life, there will have accumulated a body of agricultural knowledge resulting from an investment of probably $500,000,000. These expenditures are resulting in a large accumulation of scientific and practical facts useful to farmers and farm home makers. l*>om this great mass of knowledge, teachers are gradually sorting out portions which are peculiarly adapted to use in making textbooks for schools for farm youth. It would seem good statesmanship to assume that this knowledge will successfully knock at the doors even of our rural schools and there find a place beside the three R's, so that each farm boy and girl may have the key to this vast store of knowledge, and that our schools will be developed to bring this information successful!}' to all youths \\lio arc to become farmers.

While Congress provided only for colleges of agriculture, the movement which was crystallized into the Federal law of 1862 has resulted also in developing agricultural education in schools below collegiate grade. Thus a number of agricultural high schools of secondary school grade have been successfully organized ; agriculture has also found its way with some degree of success into the seconrlarv courses of public schools in cities,

INTRODUCTION 9

towns, villages and consolidated rural schools, and even in the elementary courses of the district rural schools. The three distinctive kinds of schools in which agricultural education will be most intensively and successfully taught are State agricultural colleges ; large agricultural high schools, probably one for each ten counties ; and consolidated rural and village schools to which the pupils are taken in school wagons. The State normal schools also are preparing to do especially good service in fitting teachers to instruct in agriculture, and many of the colleges of agriculture are establishing educational departments in which to make a specialty of helping prepare the large number of teachers needed. Many city and town public schools, also non-public schools of all grades, including universities, will also provide more or less instruction relating to the farm and farm home, and the aggregate of their work will be considerable.

But the bulk of the work will be done in an articulated system made up of the four classes of schools which are attended mainly by pupils from the farm, most of whom are to manage farms and farm homes. These are, first, district rural schools, usually with one room, to which the pupils walk ; and while these schools are destined to give way in well-settled farm communities to the larger school next named, probably a hundred thousand will remain in sparsely settled and isolated communities. Schools of the second class are formed by consolidating six or eight one-room schools in the open country, and the pupils are transported to and from the schools, for the most part, in school wagons. These consolidated rural schools (of which we should have 20,000 or 30,000, located on small school farms among farms, and giving instruction to pupils from farm homes) to distinguish them from district rural schools, may properly be called farm schools, as Grant Farm School, Owl Creek Farm School. Schools of the third class are on larare school lo FAR.M de\']-:loi'.mi:nt

farms, provide dormitories, or allow the pupils to board in the adjoining town, are of secondary grade, and are called agricultural high schools. They receive students from consolidated rural schools and from the district rural schools, also from village and town schools, most of whom return to the farm, hut they also prepare students to enter the agricultural college. The State agricultural colleges constitute the fourth class. In a few States they are separate institutions; in others they are joined with colleges of mechanic arts and colleges of science ; and in yet otiier cases the agricultural college is one of a group of colleges making up the State university.

In the district rural school some subjects relating to agriculture and home making may be successfully taught by well-prepared teachers. Some rather inexpensive equipment can be afiforded. and the practical facilities of the farm and the farm home may be used extensively. Here the preparation of the teacher is the paramount consideration.

The consolidated rural school, or farm school, receives pupils from a district four to six miles across. It has a ten-acre farm, a four or five-room school building, a cottage for the principal and small farm buildings. On the half of the school farm which is used for a combined campus and farmstead, there are groves, orchards, gardens, ornamental trees, shrul)s and flowers and ample playgrounds. On the other half, are field crops on miniature fields and plats. The pupils, under the instruction of the teacher who is trained to teach agriculture, use all these plantings as a working laboratory. The older pupils attend school only six months and the alternating six months they help raise crops on the home farm. The principal can help the parents supervise their work and make the summer a truly educational period of apprenticeship in the actual business of farming. In like

INTRODUCTION It

manner the assistant principal, who is trained to teach home economics, can visit the older girls in their homes dnring- the vacation and tints snpplement the instrnction given in cooking, sewing and other household subjects taught during the winter in school. Thus the one to two hundred farms and farm homes in the consolidated rural school district are great laboratory adjuncts to the farm school.

The large agricultural high school has a group of trained technical teachers in agriculture and home economics, each with such equipment as is necessary to demonstrate and give practice in the various special lines taught.

The agricultural college is still more highly equipped with technical teachers, laboratories, libraries and facilities to give training preparatory to teaching research or other public or private service in agriculture or home economics, as well as for the practical affairs of the farm and the farm home.

The college receives students from agricultural high schools or from other secondary schools giving an equivalent of preparation. The agricultural high school recei\-es pupils from the district rural school ; and from the consolidated rural, village or town school where a partial agricultural high school course is given, students are received with such advanced standing as their advancement warrants. The consolidated rural school provides the elementary eight-year course, and often one. two or more years of the high school course. A system under which many farm pupils can secure the elementary course and two years of high school work in the consolidated rural school, or in the ^'illage or town school, and a two-year finishing course in a large agricultural high school, would suit the needs of hundreds of thousands who are to be farmers and farm homemakers. The expense in time and money would not be

loo i,'rc'at and the education and inspiration for good farming, superior home-making and enlightened citizenship thus sustained in the open country will be beyond our fondest dreams. Boys from villages, cities and sparsel}' settled districts who wish to learn farming, can often secure places on good farms where they can work in summer and attend the consolidated rural school or the agricultural high school in winter.

This general scheme of four classes of schools, closely interwoven as a part of our entire school system, promises to provide both general and vocational school facilities for nearly all who are to live on farms. At the same time, vocational as well as general training is being developed for those who work in the non-agricultural industries. Thus vocational education in the productive industries and in liome making promises to follow technical education for the professions. When all the schools needed to provide vocational training for the vast numbers of those who are to work on the farm, in the shop and in the home are thus developed, the specialization of those designed to teach these specific subjects will be produced by normal schools and normal departments in secondar}' and collegiate schools, as now teachers are prepared to teach the general school subjects. The preparation of teachers will be the great problem only during the period of rapidly developing vocational education, and during that period wages for those who can successfully introduce these subjects will be relatively hisfh and the service most useful and attractive.

Chapter II Farming As A Vocation

Farming a good business. — Since all lines of human endeavor are open to free competition, people flock into any vocation which temporarily seems especially profitable, and they as quickly leave a vocation which becomes unprofitable, all industries thus being kept at nearl}^ the average in opportunity. The law of supply and demand, in the main, controls.^ Farming is, on the whole, a conservative line of business, though often subject to severe variations in the profit it affords. In farming, few men become millionaires, and few paupers. It is not a line of the greatest financial opportunities nor of the greatest misfortunes. Its money rewards average less than those of the average city vocations, but including with things money will buy, those things money will not purchase, or for which cash is not needed, farming furnishes as much, or more, on the average, of remuneration as does effort applied in the average of other vocations. In conducting the family-sized farm, the minor portion of the remuneration comes in the form of money, while good food, clothing, a beautiful home, wholesome outdoor employment, independence, and other useful and enjoyable features of rural life constitute the larger portion.

State benefited by a strong race of farmers, — The changed conditions of modern times require a smaller proportion of the whole people on the farms than formerly; only about one-third of all engaged in gainful operations in the United States are now tillers of the soil, and the indications are that this will be further reduced to one-fourth of the whole, when the ratio must become nearly static. Labor-saving machinery makes

14 FARM Di:VELOPMENT

it possible for fewer people to produce the food and raw material of clothing required for all classes of people than formerly ; while, on the other hand, the cities require more workers in manufacturing industries, in commerce, in transportation, in the professions and in special and personal service. Standards of living have changed and the average person demands much more of the non-agricultural commodities than formerly, while the amount of foods and fibers required by each person remains nearly stationary. The satisfaction of these increased demands gives profitable employment to more people in the cities. On the other hand, the average farmer can produce more than formerly, because of better methods and machinery, which make his labor more efficient. There is a constant migration of the farmers to the cities, especially to the large cities of America and other civilized countries, and nearly all cities the world over are growing rapidly. This movement from land to town is influenced mainly by economic conditions, but our educational system has led people to overestimate the professions and to undervalue the opportunities of such \'ocations as farming, mechanics, and home making, where more physical labor is required.

On the other hand, the growth of farm population does not keep pace with the city population, and in some localities, as in Xew England and Scotland, the actual number of farmers is much smaller than formerly. ^^' itli the advent of periods of better times, there is a strong movement of farmers to the cities. This movement is temporarily checked by panics, or periods when business is depressed. l)ut. as the decades pass, the population of the cities grows faster than that of the country, because relatively larger numbers find employment in the cities. This movement will continue as long as the needs for workers in the town industries and professions grow more rapidly tlian do the needs for workers in the rural

FARMING AS A X'OCATION 15

industries. Some |)cn])lc prcl'tT llie associations of the towns and cities, others prefer the quiet, independent and heahhful life on the farm. There are larger opportunities in the cities for a few persons who happen to be especially gifted in business or as si:)ecialists in given lines of work, but the opportunities of the country average as well, or better, than the opportunities of the city and the chances of utter failure are far greater in the city than in the countr}^

The home is the most influential institution in our national life, and the farm home is the best place to produce strong and useful citizens. The farm home is racially our most important home. Farmers are rather conservative and are peculiarly loyal to the good of the community. Their voice usually rings true for sound and good government, though they are sometimes slow to embrace improvements in governmental affairs. The Nation needs to retain men and women on our rich lands who are so trained as citizens, as well as farmers, as to be capable of maintaining our country life at a high standard. It is interested in the farmer's prosperity, because the general well-being of the rural community insures for the future a strong race of people, and prosperity among the producing classes, insures prosperity to all classes and to the Nation. yToo large a proportion of the whole people on farms is not desirable, as competition in the production of farm commodities should not be so strong that the farm family cannot secure the profits necessary to supply not only good food and clothing, but to provide for education, books, opportunities for travel. etc\ The farmer's sons and daughters need to be well fed and well clothed, and not only taught industry and morality, but given excellent business and educational advantages in general, and taught how gradually to enrich the soil. Improved farm machinery and home appliances, and better methods, have aided in i6 FAR^^ i)i:vF.r.op.\iF.x'r

vastly improving the conditions of work and living on the farm, but further improvements are needed to keep country life apace with the rapidly improving life of the city.

Studying agriculture is interesting and useful. — A course of study in efficient agricultural schools and colleges gives much pleasure, because the studies include interesting things in nature, in business, in the home life, and in the affairs of man generally ; and after leaving school for practical life, the student finds a continuous source of very great pleasure in his acquaintance with the practical means and processes of nature, and in his knowledge of how^ better to work with man. Nature's classics are not in a man-made book, but are spread out in passive and active forms about the farm. Each animal, plant, and field is a word, a sentence, or a page. Each day is a chapter, and each year is a grand book full of substantial structures, sturdy industr_y. exacting duties, wonderful opportunities, noble im])ulses. interesting life, gracious friendships, warm-hearted loves, and the rhythmic music of the revolving forces and spirits of inanimate and animate nature. The man or woman who remains in country life, not following the tide to the city, receives a wonderful inspiration from special study in an agricultural school.