John H. Worst

“ Therefore the college graduate, as well as any other aspirant, must carve his way to fame and fortune by energy and perseverance, or lose his opportunity in the tremendous activities going on about him. His only advantage is superior training which must nevertheless be pitted against practical minds in strenuous rivalry for every desirable thing he would accomplish. The mere fact of education is considered no badge of merit. Education represents power, but until it manifests itself in action, it is merely static, not dynamic, potential, not actual. ”

“ The stern necessity that compels him to labor, to think and to plan, lifts him into the pleasurable atmosphere of usefulness and imparts zeal and ambition to his energies. There can be no "excellence without great labor", and "hard work is only another name for genius."
A young man cannot begin life with a richer heritage than good health, good habits and a liberal education—an education that imparts culture to his mind and power to his body. If he should never have occasion to use his hands in some useful vocation, the training they have received will never prove burdensome. ”

“ The dreams of the pioneers are fast becoming realities. The erstwhile home of the red man and the feeding ground of the bison, are destined soon to be thickly dotted over with luxurious farmsteads, made beautiful by the arts of civilization and prosperous by the skill and industry of a happy and contented rural population. ”

“ For there is no honest work a gentleman may not do. Work elevates a man. It perpetuates the manhood he inherited, which was built up by labor and thought in the flesh and blood of his ancestors. The necessity for labor, therefore is heaven's blessing and to repudiate it is to invite physical and mental decay.
Liberal education should take a far wider range than has ever been assigned to it and exert an influence affecting matter as well as mind. It has a double mission, that of facilitating earning power to provide for physical comforts and also to prepare them to live. ”

“ The purpose is not only to increase production as a means of profit and to render helpful social service, but to make farm life and rural conditions so agreeable and satisfying that the choice of agricultural pursuits, on the part of educated young people, will prove as popular and inviting as that of any other industry or profession. This is not an impossibility. From an educational view-point no vocation exceeds agriculture in the material available for calling out the best there is in man, spiritually or intellectually. ”

“ I believe we shall see the day when boys and girls who are in the common school together; without damage, can be co-educated in all other grades of school life. The farmer will then not have a separate and specific college for agriculture, while the rest have one for 'mental culture;' nor will college boys in those days be ashamed to look ahead to farming as a profession. There is no occupation that requires so much wit and educated tact, and so much positive knowledge as farming. ”

“ And yet sacred as is the soil and binding as is the farmer's obligation to society, the means for providing the world's food is nevertheless at his mercy.
It is a well-known fact that the soil can readily be depleted of its fertility and thus robbed of its strength by a system of exploitation, commonly referred to as "extensive farming." Too much of our land is being thus exploited. On the other hand the productiveness of the soil may be very greatly improved. ”

“ He goes back to the ape when his hands have to be cased in gloves and his brain is ashamed of decent labor. In these school-gardens botany will be applied to horticulture. In the shops our boys and girls will learn to create things. The trouble with education now is that it divorces knowledge from work—the brains from the hands. In the twentieth century the glory of American education will also be a thorough knowledge of economics, civics and history, applied to good citizenship. Colleges will surely be a part of the common school system, and just as full of modern life. ”

“ To supply these necessities an industry is created—the business of agriculture—the most important industry in all the world. An industry of such fundamental importance, moreover, should receive from the states and from the federal government financial consideration in proportion to its moral and economic importance as well as to the probabilities that may be entertained for its continued improvement. For abundant as are earth's natural resources, yet without the aid and direction of human intelligence they could not supply the world's ever increasing population with food, clothing and shelter. ”

“ Since it is a matter of common observation that wealth is easily dissipated, especially when inherited, farseeing parents prefer an education for their children that is adapted to some useful end rather than the education that is largely ornamental or fashionable.
The vicissitudes of life are many. Fortune is fickle and but few young people can hope to command perpetual leisure even should their bad judgment make such a thing desirable. There can never be real independence of thought and action apart from one's conscious ability to cope with others on equal terms in any human emergency. ”

“ The higher education of the village and city youth, together with a modicum of the country youth, with only the fifth to eighth grade for the best blood of the state may stand for the educator's ideals, but it is bad for the country as a whole. It tends to make aristocrats of the poorest and slaves of the best blood. Education is for all, not for a favored few. ”

“ The seeds of prejudice against rural life and manual labor are often scattered in the country schools by teachers innocently imbued with the "ideal condition." The fascinations and allurements of the city readily impress themselves upon the youthful mind, and the fact that facilities for liberal education were not offered for the relief of the toiling millions, unless to transform them into a different social element, naturally turned the eyes of those who were able to obtain a liberal education toward the cities. ”

“ For just in proportion as agriculture advances or declines will the prosperity of the people rise or fall, and the integrity of our government be stable or questionable. This fact has been clearly demonstrated in the history of nations; hence, stewardship of the soil embraces not only conservation of its fertility, but the fostering of such social institutions and educational forces as may be necessary to support a rural civilization that will minister to all the physical, mental and spiritual wants of a highly intellectual and permanent population. ”

“ In this busy world there is honest work for every man to perform. Civilization has multiplied human wants and also developed the ingenuity necessary to gratify them. But it requires labor. Not such, however, as was performed by the slave, but skilled labor—labor where the hand is guided by an intellect, quickened by the agency of class-room and laboratory for the task assigned; labor, such as will reflect credit upon and elevate a gentleman. ”

“ The friends of each, therefore, should work for all and all work for each, and becoming thus federated, they will prove to be a positive force and establish, beyond question, a community spirit satisfactory to old and young alike.
A sufficient number of these rural social institutions to meet the changed conditions of modern life is as essential as a progressive and highly contented agriculture; for without such institutions agriculture will decline until on a level with the peasantry of other and less favored countries. ”

“ Mere scholarship—book-learning—is seldom effective in the solution of intricate national and economic problems. For profound judgment and constructive ability, such as frequently become imperative in great crises are qualities which are not evolved through classical investigations. They are born rather of experience and contact with the rugged every day affairs of life. To exert a guiding influence in the affairs of state one must feel the throb of living forces and come in touch with the great heart of humanity. ”

“ The world's work must be done, and as those whose stewardship is the soil are compelled to render a combined physical and mental service in order to discharge their social obligations, they are entitled to education in harmony with the tasks awaiting them, to the end that they may work intelligently, hence joyfully.
Agriculture and engineering, therefore, are fundamental vocations when considered either from the view-point of necessity or the country's prosperity. ”

“ European countries abound in sad memories of wasted soil fertility and forest destruction. Slowly but surely they are rebuilding and rehabilitating worn out tracts at tremendous expense. The ruin which ignorance accomplished with alacrity, education is slowly and painfully undoing. Americans should heed the lessons of history and profit by the mistakes of other countries. The production of food, clothing and other necessaries of life which is of vital importance to a nation, cannot, with safety, be left to blind forces or to revered but ignorant traditions. ”

“ The door of opportunity stands ajar, inviting you to enter and share the blessings that reward the industrious and reap the honors that crown the lives of those whose stewardship has been faithfully kept. May no temptation ever swerve you from loyalty to the cause which your alma mater represents. Too often the enemies of industrial freedom capture with the blandishments of vanity, the trusted leaders of reform. ”

“ The needs of culture cannot be satisfied by mere discipline any more than they can be satisfied by merely utilitarian subjects. But where the training is essentially practical and directly helpful in discharging the highest of all human duties, that of providing the necessaries of life, while at the same time affording abundant opportunity for the study of the language and literature of our own race, the blending thus of cultural and practical training should possess a clientage immeasurably larger, because more useful, than where only the purely cultural is sought. ”

“ This surplus of yield for which each plant has need of but a single seed, and more especially this improvement of quality for which the plant has no concern, is Nature's reciprocal reward for having given her children gratuitously that protection which otherwise they would have had to provide for themselves.
Nor is animal life less susceptible of improvement. Between the animal wild and the animal domesticated—that is whether Nature-bred or man-bred—the range in quality is as marked as that which separates the savage from the philosopher.
Nature demands only strength, endurance ”

“ Some of the foremost educators of the day admit that the study of the sciences possess as much disciplinary value as that of the ancient languages, and the information obtained, even though incidental to the culture sought after is of inestimable value in the practical affairs of life. The fact that but few instructors are prepared to teach the sciences as creditably as they are to teach the ancient languages, does not weaken the claims set up for scientific education. ”

“ Undirected, however, Nature's forces act blindly; hence, produce mainly such qualities in organic life as endurance, or adaptation to local soil and climatic conditions. In the animal and vegetable kingdoms the universal demand of Nature is to perpetuate their species—"to produce after their own kind." In accordance with this law the humblest plant or animal is compelled to maintain a perpetual warfare against its fellows for means of subsistence. ”

“ God never intended, however, that parents should provide a property inheritance for their children that will deprive them of the natural advantages which reasonable labor and its restraining influence afford both body and mind. Parental drudgery and self-denial for the purpose of relieving children from the necessity of wholesome effort is mistaken generosity. It makes parent and child alike fall short of the high purposes for which life is given. For life is intended for more important purposes than mere money-getting or the pursuit of objects from which man is utterly divorced at death. ”

“ Beginnings of Agriculture. Here agriculture begins. By relieving plants of this intense competition by means of tillage, and by selecting the most promising for domestication, they are enabled to use all their energy for the development of those qualities which add to their intrinsic value, instead of expending it in the struggle for existence. Given, thus, free access to the soil and sunshine, with needful nourishment supplied and their fungous or parasitical enemies destroyed, the domesticated plants yield trustful obedience to the protecting hand of the husbandman. ”

“ That increasing acquaintance with the laws of phenomenon which has through successive ages enabled us to subjugate Nature to our needs, and in these days gives the common laborer comforts which a few centuries ago, kings could not purchase, is scarcely in any degree owed to appointed means of instructing our youth. The vital knowledge—that by which we have grown as a nation to what we are, and which now underlies our whole existence, is a knowledge that has got itself taught in nooks and corners ”