ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED | OCTOBER 15, 1908 | THE FARMER'S ADVOCATE
Again and again the plaintive quest is heard, “What will keep boys on the farm?” Will money-making do it? No, for the exceptionally clever boy can generally make more money in the city, where a certain number of opportunities are found to realize in the labor of others. Will the introduction of urban facilities and privileges into the country keep the boys there? Will rural telephones, rural mail delivery, improved roads, multiplication of electric lines, modern-fitted country homes, more liberal spending allowances, daily newspapers, and the various other fruits of modern civilization keep the boys on the farm? No, for, improve these as you will, the city will still keep several notches ahead in all such privileges and creature comforts. Will the multiplication of rural educational facilities keep the boys on the farm? NO, for their tendency has ever been citywards. Much may be accomplished, though, by a reformation and balancing up of our educational systems, so as to overcome the prejudice with which it now inclines so many pupils from farm to city.
Will enlarged opportunity for political and other public service keep the boys on the farm? No, for in this respect the city man, in closer touch, as he must always be, with large business interests, will naturally have and continue to have an advantage.
What, then, must we do to keep the boys on the farm? Mainly this, arouse and cultivate their interest in the farm and in the distinctly rural advantages of country life. The science of agriculture, the natural processes and mysteries of forest, field and stable, the nobility and fascination in co-operating with nature for the production of increasingly larger and better products of all kinds- this must be the keynote of any gospel calculated to impress the rising generation with the advantages of farm as compared with city life and occupation. With this should go s cultivation of the appreciation of the beauties of the country, the grace and sweep of the landscape, the tang of its fresh, crisp air, the sympathetic interest in the gradual unfolding of plant, animal and bacterial life; the leisure, the sanity, the sweet goodness and wholesomeness of the country life, as contrasted with the sordidness and inherent hollowness of aims centered merely on material ambitions and dollars.
The introduction of modern conveniences in the country, the enlargement and broadening of country life socially and otherwise, and the provision of freer economic conditions under which the farmer’s toll will be more generously and fairly rewarded, these things are good as helping to mitigate the disadvantages of country as compared with city life, but we must not depend on them too far. The farm, as a mere replica of the city, can be but a second-rate imitation after all. The real, positive, dominating influences that will hold people to the land are the distinctively rural and agricultural features above referred to. The boys and girls must be interested, not in the city facilities transplanted to the country, but in the farm and country itself.
How can their interest be thus centered? The public school garden, the agricultural press, the agricultural college, the Farmer’s Institutes, and all the manifold agencies working for the uplift of agriculture and the rural home- these must be more fully enlisted, and on these we must chiefly rely.