Several factors must cooperate in the improvement of the farmer’s condition.  He must have the chance to be educated in the widest possible sense—­in the sense which keeps ever in view the intimate relationship between the theory of education and the facts of life.  In all education we should widen our aims.  It is a good thing to produce a certain number of trained scholars and students; but the education superintended by the State must seek rather to produce a hundred good citizens than merely one scholar, and it must be turned now and then from the class book to the study of the great book of nature itself.  This is especially true of the farmer, as has been pointed out again and again by all observers most competent to pass practical judgment on the problems of our country life.  All students now realize that education must seek to train the executive powers of young people and to confer more real significance upon the phrase “dignity of labor,” and to prepare the pupils so that, in addition to each developing in the highest degree his individual capacity for work, they may together help create a right public opinion, and show in many ways social and cooperative spirit.  Organization has become necessary in the business world; and it has accomplished much for good in the world of labor.  It is no less necessary for farmers.  Such a movement as the grange movement is good in itself and is capable of a well-nigh infinite further extension for good so long as it is kept to its own legitimate business.  The benefits to be derived by the association of farmers for mutual advantage are partly economic and partly sociological.

Moreover, while in the long run voluntary efforts will prove more efficacious than government assistance, while the farmers must primarily do most for themselves, yet the Government can also do much.  The Department of Agriculture has broken new ground in many directions, and year by year it finds how it can improve its methods and develop fresh usefulness.  Its constant effort is to give the governmental assistance in the most effective way; that is, through associations of farmers rather than to or through individual farmers.  It is also striving to coordinate its work with the agricultural departments of the several States, and so far as its own work is educational to coordinate it with the work of other educational authorities.  Agricultural education is necessarily based upon general education, but our agricultural educational institutions are wisely specializing themselves, making their courses relate to the actual teaching of the agricultural and kindred sciences to young country people or young city people who wish to live in the country.