[AGRICULTURE]
Here is an article from a cyclopedia for schools. The farther you go in school, the more frequently you will need to consult such books. In such cases you should learn to turn quickly to the part of this article you want without reading it all through. Sometimes the topic you are looking up will be the same as one of the headings in the book. Often it will not. Instead of reading the whole article, however, you will generally be able to judge what heading is likely to cover your topic.
If you don't find what you want, keep looking. For example, if you wished to find more about wheat, oats, poultry or cattle you would turn to other volumes of this cyclopedia and read the special article on the subject you were seeking.
Your teacher will assign different individuals or different sections of the class one or more of the following topics covered in this selection. Of course you will not think that you have in this brief selection anything like a complete discussion of each of these topics. You will, however, find something interesting about each of them.
1. How much time it takes to raise a bushel of corn.
2. How barren areas can be made productive.
3. Four causes of progress in agriculture.
4. Four different kinds of agriculture.
5. Where America raises her cereals.
6. What agriculture does for each of us.
7. Good roads and the farmer.
8. Things the farmer has to fight.
9. Truck farming.
10. Where animals thrive.
11. Agriculture experiment stations.
12. Changes in agriculture methods.
Agriculture is the art of cultivating the soil to produce material for feeding and clothing the human race. It is the oldest of all occupations. "The first farmer," says Emerson, "was the first man, and all historic nobility rests on possession and use of the land." Agriculture is also the most widely-extended of all occupations, and it lies at the foundation of all other industries. Daniel Webster once said, "When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of civilization." Unless man were fed and clothed the race would perish.
Illustrating its Importance.
Mr. and Mrs. Adams with their children, John, aged 14, and Mary, aged 12, lived in the city. Like many other city children, John and Mary knew but little of the country, and did not seriously consider farming or anything connected with it. Their father and mother, however, had come from the farm, and they decided to help John and Mary to obtain correct ideas of the country and of a life such as they lived in their younger days.