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History University of Illinois

We have in the record of the meeting of the New York agricultural society, September, 1849, the views of two men well known in their day as promoters of the best in agriculture. Professor John P. Norton of Yale college stated that for two or three years he had been engaged in giving instruction in scientific agriculture and he had found that the great obstacle in the way of improvements in farming arose from the fact that the farmers thought they knew as much as was necessary. One can fairly hear the weary sigh he drew as he said it, the sigh that so many have drawn since his day. Professor Norton went on to say that in the state of Connecticut three-fourths of the legislators were farmers; yet it was with the greatest difficulty that a small appropriation had been procured for the furtherance of agricultural knowledge. The theory that the farmers knew enough already was disputed by the soil itself, for in many parts of the countiy it had deteriorated shamefully under the established methods of farming. As for a plan for bringing about general agricultural education, Professor Norton said he had none. The one thing which he declared he unequivocally favored was that, by some means or other, education should be made possible for the farmer. Three years later Professor Norton speaking before the same society had a plan to offer. But it was not one that appealed widely for it proposed that agricultural education be made merely a department "hitched t o " a private institution. The popular mind always seemed to sense that such a "hitching" would have no more chance of developing a unique and significant type of agricultural education than the family cow would have of developing a unique and significant trotting record by being hitched to a racing sulkey. Following Professor Norton at the September meeting in 1849 was Daniel Lee of Georgia. He said the great difficulty was that they were divided on the subject of how agricultural instruction should be offered. Some desired one school, some three, some eight, and some one in every county, "and in this way they accomplished nothing." At this very time, however, certain practical advocates of agricultural education were making earnest efforts to get the