Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 September 1879 — Farming and Education. [ARTICLE]

Farming and Education.

Whatever croakers may say, the rolling years are slowly but' surely bringing forth progress in many essential departments of human interest. As experience utters its unanswerable voice, error grows less confident and gradually disappears; while the right and the best win popularity and secure the approval and patronage of the intelligent and influential. It i»but a few years since the opinion prevailed in a large part of. our country, that agriculture required but little-information and mental training for its successful conduct; that an educated man ought not to waste his talents in so plain and htfmble a calling; and that it was compromising to personal dignity for one to identify himself with the common duties of the tiller of the soil.* Nowit is clear that there is a very great demand for brain as well as muscle in performing the duties of the farm. t The difficulty is found to be in the want of sound judgment, of fertile minds as well as acres; of power to promptly and economically utilize discoveries and improvements. There is now a general desire in the highest educated circles to devise the best methods for preparing our young men for the calling that supports all other callings. Hence our agricultural, colleges. While the problem is hard to solve, "it is evident that the extraordinary attention to the higher departments of instruction in industrial pursuits Jts rapidly strengthening, enlarging and enriching the minds of those who are entering the occupation of the farmer. The farmer has long been working for the world unappreciated; but now the world is turning to most earnest work for the farmer. So far from the educated man feeling himself Above the grand old calling, he is now, in multitudes of instances, toiling with his mighty talents jo give wcccss to those who pursue It is highly complimentary to farming that, while tew farmers leave their plain work for complete or continued devotion to any one of the so-called learned professions, there are many, very many, of those who profess to be devotees of one of those professions, who gladly and persistently add the pleasure and security of farming to their special work. It is not merely Anglo-Saxon love of land; it is an intuitive conviction' of what is the most trps|wqrthy,of merely human possessions. i'armlngT elevated; directed and constantly improved by advancing knowledge is, in a large degree, the hope of the continued prosperity and progress of our country.— Sural New Yorker. Texas has 206 newspapers,