Short course for farmers-(Four lectures daily). [Delivered at the University of Nebraska in February, 1892.] 1. Good government. 2. State education. 3. Practical education. 19. Plant foods. 20. Flowers and reproduction. 4. Anatomy and physiology of horses 22. General propagation. and cattle. 23. The apple orchard. 5. The vineyard and small fruit garden. 24. Climatology. 6. Wind-breaks and hedges. 7. Electricity applied to vegetable growth (2 lectures). 8. Soundness in animals. 9. Horses' feet. 10. Stable and farm hygiene. 11. Infectious diseases of stock. 12. Breeds of cattle. 13. Cattle foods. 14. Stock-breeding-heredity. 25. Sugar beets (3 lectures). 28. Structure, development and trans- 29. Life histories and habits of insects: Remedies. 30. Insect enemies of garden and forest vegetation. 31. Insect enemies of grains and grasses. 32. Insect enemies of domestic animals. 15. Stock-breeding-principles of prog- 33. A few geological hints. ress. 16. Sheep and wool interests. 17. Plant structure. 18. Plant growth. 34. The old-time racers. 35. A drop of the water we drink. 36. Inoculation, with practical instruction in all methods. The last schedule-that of the Kansas Agricultural College-illustrates the manner in which the agricultural and mechanical work may be combined in a single course. Course of study, Kansas State Agricultural College. The history of manual training has been too often written to need more than a brief notice here. It may properly be said to have superseded the old system of apprenticeship in the industrial arts. In Europe it is not wholly a modern idea, but in the United States it has only reached anything like complete development within the present generation. The first regular manual training school established in this country was that at St. Louis, connected with the Washington University. Its founder was Dr. C. M. Woodward, under whose direction it is still continued, and is generally recognized as among the foremost schools of its kind in the United States. Unlike the movement for the advancement of agricultural education, the manual training idea was at once received into popular favor. Its practical utility was so thoroughly apparent, and the results of its work so immediately available, that a demand for departments of industrial training or mechanic arts arose in all parts of the country, and especially in the cities and manufacturing towns. This demand was in many places speedily met by the establishment of such departments by private and incorporated institutions of learning, by the founding of special manual training schools by the States and by individuals, and, in recent years, not a few of the States have introduced work of an industrial nature as part of the regular course of the public schools. Thus in many of the colleges endowed by the act of 1862 the mechanic arts received attention from the first. In 1890, nearly all the State beneficiaries were found to have at least rudimentary mechanical departments. What each college has accomplished in this line since that time, with the aid of the last Federal endowment, will appear in the following sketches of their work. An idea of the proportion observed in the expenditure of the fund for mechanical departments and for all other departments allowed by the act of Congress may be obtained from the following table, which shows the percentage of the total expenditure for the year ended June 30, 1892, which was applied to the department of mechanic arts: This table, it will be noticed, gives the expenditure and ratio by States, and not by colleges. In one sense such a comparison is somewhat misleading, as in some instances, where the most complete mechanical departments are maintained, the expenditure for that purpose during the year was small. In general, where the ratio has been highest, it has been due to the purchase of equipment for a department that was but poorly supplied before, or where no such department had before existed. There are now in almost every State manual training schools, other than those maintained as departments of the agricultural and mechanical colleges; but with few exceptions their facilities for instruction can hardly be compared with those possessed by the latter institutions. Where the shops for the mechanic arts have been for some years in operation it has been found necessary to replace a portion of their equipment every few years, so constant is the improvement in all kinds of mechanical apparatus. As a result the expense of keeping up such shops to the highest standard of usefulness is comparatively great. The States, by appropriating funds for the erection of mechanical buildings, have done much to render the development of the departments of mechanic arts possible. Without such aid the benefits of the Federal grant would have been seriously limited in this line of work. There are two wholly different plans of instruction to be found in different colleges in the United States where shop work is made a part of the course. The one known as the Russian system is based upon the idea that every piece of work undertaken by the student in the shops should have a distinct educational value; no time is expended in the production of articles for use or for the market. Every operation from the first to the last mechanical exercise is to be considered as a link in the chain of the complete mechanical course. The other method of instruction is to employ students in the making of articles of value, to teach them more by continual practice than by detailed instruction, often to employ them out of doors in performing carpenter's or smith's work, and, in general, to make them learn by doing. It is noticeable that the most successful schools are those where neither the one nor the other plan is strictly adhered to, but where constant practice in the use of tools is required, while at the same time no student is allowed to undertake work for which he has not been previously prepared. The great advantage which the so-called Russian system has over a course that is wholly or mainly utilitarian lies simply in the fact that it is a system, and a system which makes possible the development of manual mechanical training as a science. The difference in final results obtained is that the one method tends to produce a skilled laborer, the other a master mechanic; but it is well known that without a union of practice and system little can be done toward producing either. A careful study of the organization of the mechanical departments of the agricultural and mechanical colleges discloses the fact that the more complete the equipment of these departments, the greater the facilities for instruction, and the higher the standard of work in the mathematical and physical sciences, the stronger is the tendency to get away from the purely industrial cast of the shop-work and to make the manual labor required partake more of the nature of laboratory practice. One sometimes hears it said that it is only the lower grade institutions which attempt to prepare students for the practice of a trade; but this is manifestly an unjust stricture upon the work of certain colleges whose functions must necessarily be of a somewhat pecu*liar nature, as, for instance, the colored schools and the colleges recently established in the newer States. It must be remembered that, like everything else, a perfect mechanical course can only be maintained as the result of a gradual and long-continued growth. It would be clearly absurd to prescribe a highly technical course of mechanics when the previous training of the pupils was wholly inadequate. Another rather surprising fact to be noticed in regard to these departments is the ease and rapidity with which they have generally been organized and equipped, and the readiness with which the regular college work has adjusted itself to the new conditions introduced thereby. It might reasonably have been expected that some difficulty would be experienced in their harmonious assimilation with the rest of the course. But such has not been the case. They seem, in fact, to meet exactly a long-felt want, to fall naturally, as it were, into symmetrical coöperation with all other departments. Instead of being, as was anticipated by some, mere abnormal excrescences upon the legitimate curricula-uncongenial attachments to be "carried," because the law provided for them-they have become the source of very material advantage to the institutions, and where conscientiously and intelligently developed, there is almost no department that is not benefited by their work. In looking at the provisions made by the colleges for the mechanical departments, we are at once struck by the very liberal policy on the whole adopted, as regards their apparatus and preparation for successful work. While some colleges, whose limited means oblige them to make a modest beginning, have been unable to furnish separate buildings for this purpose, most of them possess very conveniently arranged shops. These are usually three or four in number, a carpenter's shop, a forge room, a furnace room (or one room for both kinds of work), and a machine shop. Separate tools are provided for each student in all bench work, and often many of the most frequently used power machines, such as lathes and saws. In the forge room, or, as it is sometimes more properly called, the blacksmith's shop, each student or set of students is given the use of a fire, an anvil, and the necessary smith's tools. In the furnace room or foundry, benches, one or more large furnaces, and frequently a large cupola, are provided. The most elaborate equipment is that of the machine shop, which includes the steam plant and electric plant, milling machines, drills, etc. The yearly advancement in physical science makes this department the most difficult to maintain properly, as the first cost of the plant is not always the greatest. The best idea of the equipments of such shops can be found by taking a single institution as illustrating their general nature. For this purpose the following statement, taken from the recent announcement of the engineering department of the University of Tennessee, is given. It must not be imagined, however, that all of the agricultural and mechanical colleges are as well supplied with mechanical apparatus as is · this university. I select it because of its almost complete equipment. The facilities for foundry work, alone, are wanting. The shops are in a separate three-story building. WOOD-WORKING SHOPS (2). The first of these is a room about forty by thirty-five feet, furnished with benches having drawers and lockers for tools. Each of these has a Yale lock, with its special key. The lockers stand on the benches and contain a full set of tools for the exercises to be performed, each containing four planes, five chisels, backsaw, square, level, gauge, measuring rule, dividers, hammer, mallet, oilstone, oil can, and brad awl. A case in this room contains the additional tools for general use, such as rip and cross-cut saws, bits and bit stocks. A quick working and easily handled vise of iron is attached to the benches, one for each tool case. The second room contains twelve speed lathes for wood turning, with a full set of tools for each lathe, kept in convenient reach on a tool rack. The tools are those required for turning and boring light work. All the heavier power machines for wood working are placed in another room on the ground floor. They form a complete set for reducing lumber from its rough state to finished pieces of any kind, ready to be used for pattern making, cabinetwork or carpentry. They include a surface planer, jointer, shaper or friezer, combined rip and cross-cut circular saw, boring machine, jig saw, roll turner, and mortising machine. All these tools are new and of the best designs. Drying kiln. Connected with the wood shops is a model drying kiln. A system of steam pipes is so arranged as to give any desired temperature, this regulation being necessary to prevent chinking and splitting of boards by too rapid drying when green. The racks are so arranged as to permit of the removal of any piece of lumber desired without unpiling. BLACKSMITH SHOP. This shop has six power blast forges, of the Buffalo Forge Company's manufacture. A full set of tools for light and medium work is provided for each forge, including hammers, sledges, tongs, chisels, bolt-headers, flatters, fullers of several forms and sizes, squares, calipers, and all other tools for work which can be handled by two men. The smoke is drawn away from the forges by a large exhaust fan. Suitable benches and blacksmiths' vises are also provided. MACHINE SHOP. The machine shop is fitted up with twelve benches and vises for use in chipping, filing, and the general work of fitting together the various parts of a machine. There is also an equipment of all the tools needed for the general work of the machinist. These tools are also of the best and newest designs of workmanship. They were selected with a view to showing all the general and more important special methods used in iron working. They include engine and speed lathes, planer, shaper, heavy and sensitive drill presses, universal milling machine, universal |