The various agricultural colleges and experiment stations are constantly seeking men. It would seem that the demand would eventually be satisfied. As a matter of fact, however, it grows greater year by year, both because these institutions continue to grow and because young men are attracted more and more to practical work. It is stated that in one institution there were 46 graduates in the course in animal husbandry and that 44 went into practical work and only two sought employment in college or station. The salaries are about the same as in government positions.
Agricultural newspaper work offers an attractive field for young men who are properly trained and have a taste for this kind of work.
There is also beginning to be quite a demand for teachers of agriculture in the high schools. As a rule a man is wanted who can teach, in addition, the sciences usually taught in secondary school. The customary salary is from $70 to $100 a month on an eight to ten months basis. An experience of one or two years as a teacher in a high school, or even the lower grades of the public school, should be invaluable to the young man who expects subsequently to engage in farming. This is particularly true if he has not had the opportunity of a college training.
It is, perhaps, unnecessary to state that the salaries mentioned in this chapter are obtained only by young men who possess certain qualifications. To secure them, they must be men of ability, integrity, virtue and industry. No man who is not willing to make the preparation necessary to master his subject can expect to succeed. He must, also, be a man of absolute honesty, and he must lead a clean life. It was Bismarck who said, of German university students, One-third die out; one-third rot out; the other third rule Germany. Every man who will may choose whether he will belong to Bismarcks second or third class.
The question for the young man of 20 is not merely as to the morrow, but what is likely to be the trend of events during the next 35 to 50 years.
In 1800 the United States nowhere crossed the Mississippi and nowhere touched the Gulf of Mexico. In 1850 the country west of the Mississippi River was agriculturally largely an undiscovered region. Since 1870 we have much more than doubled our population and our agriculture. Since that time we have subdued more of the open country to the uses of man than we had been able to do in 250 years of our previous history.
During the past 300 years we have prided ourselves upon being an agricultural people. We have been an agricultural people, but our problems have not been chiefly those of the agriculturist, but those of the engineer.
Our problem, in the past, has not been to make two blades of grass to grow where but one grew before. Our problem has been to harvest and transport two bushels of wheat or two bales of cotton with the labor previously required to harvest one. Our crops have been so abundant that the agricultural problems connected with the growing of them has been secondary to the engineering problems of their harvesting and transportation. The self-binder and the steam locomotive have been our achievements.
If the writer mistakes not, the future problem will not be so much the harvesting and transporting, as the growth of the crops. In the future, young men will be needed who have studied the science of living things in order that they may make, literally, two blades of grass to grow where but one grew. To men who will be able to do so, will come success and honor.