and the garden, what a power for good the rural school will become. This cannot be accomplished until the masses become more prosperous. As it is, the rural school is an educating force with mainly one direction and one injunction. The direction leads away from the farm and the injunction is "Get away from the plow and the kitchen and become a George Washington, or a Frances Willard. It is old fashioned to settle down and have common honesty and be useful to the world."

If it be essential to the nation that there be a great common people, then some of our colleges and seminaries should point that way and try to build up a higher common life.

Every book from the first reader to the most exhaustive treatise on science, philosophy or literature and every school from the pedagogic cabin on the mountain side to the greatest university in the land has joined in teaching the plow boy that he can become president of the United States if he will acquire an education. Our national weakness to-day is lack of integrity, competency and faithfulness in the common walks of life.

What the Agricultural College Should Be and Teach.

Our colleges of agriculture have done a great work, but the people should rally around them, increase their resources and broaden their activities. The state agricultural college should be a part of the state government as essentially as the United States department of agriculture is a part of the national administration.

In addition to teaching youth it should plan and execute. It should have charge of the state conservation forces, the soil, the water, the forests, the mines, the fisheries, etc. Thus could be organized

admirable extensions of the national work under state supervision and control. All the departments of education should reach out towards the most effective accomplishment. In this way the college would prepare in the class room and furnish the field work for a body of young men fitted for useful service in the upbuilding of a state. It is time the antiquated plan of one class teaching and the other practicing, a class of leisure and a class of toil (inherited from a period when there were only two classes-master and slave) was abolished. The new life demands that the one who plans shall execute. The preacher must lead; the teacher must do things; the professors in industrial colleges must be men of affairs. There must be no leisure class. By such extension of the forces already in the field the rural South will come into its rightful heritage of prosperity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Bulletins and Publications of the Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations of the United States; Reports of U. S. Dept. of Agriculture; Congressional Records; The Encyclopedia Americana; General agricultural literature.

SEAMAN A. KNAPP,

Agent in Charge Farmers' Coöperative Demonstration
Work in the Southern States.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE KINDERGARTEN IN THE SOUTH.

N the forty or more years since its final establishment in the United States the kindergarten has spread throughout the entire country. In the East and West and in the New England states it has passed its experimental stage and has become an integral part of the public school system in practically all cities and towns of any proportion. The South has been slow in adopting it. There we find it in all stages, from the period of swaddling clothes to confident youth and well-established maturity. In spite of its conservatism, Richmond, Va., not only claims the first electric trolley system, but also the first kindergarten in the United States. The exact date is lost to history. It had but a short existence and its influence upon public opinion was "as smoke in air, or in the water, foam." It was some twenty years after this effort-about 1885-that the kindergarten obtained any real footing in the school system. Private kindergartens of varying degrees of efficiency and inefficiency existed 'tis true, but their life was precarious and interrupted and their influence sporadic. The South, in common with other sections of the country, had to suffer from the well-meaning efforts of the young woman of leisure and small means, who, because of her fondness for children and a desire to augment her income, opened so-called kindergartens which bore about as much resemblance to the real thing as the chromo to art, or the quack doctor to the scientist. That day is over, and the kindergarten in the South is at last on a professional

basis and no one dares attempt it who has not had a two-years' course in preparation.

The South now has an honorable record of twentyeight training schools for kindergartners in twelve states. Thirteen states now have public school kindergartens. Of the remaining three-South Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas-the latter has incorporated a kindergarten clause in her school law. "The spirit is willing" but the wherewithal is not yet forthcoming. Thirteen states have kindergartens supported by associations, churches or mills, as well as private kindergartens connected with schools or independent. Missouri and Kentucky have public kindergartens for negro children. In all but fourWest Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and Oklahoma -some provision has been made for this race by associations or missions. In only four states, however-Virginia, Georgia, Kentucky and Missouri-is any opportunity offered to young negro women to be trained as kindergartners.

In the public work Missouri leads in point of time, having established public kindergartens in 1873. She leads also in numbers with 126 kindergartens to her credit. Louisiana follows with forty, Kentucky with thirty-five, Oklahoma with thirty, and Maryland with twenty-six. The others follow in varying numbers from thirteen, in Georgia, to one, in the huge state of Texas.

The First Kindergarten.

It was in the city of St. Louis, Mo., that the first public kindergarten and the first training-school for kindergartners came into being. In 1873 Dr. Wm. T. Harris, ex-United States commissioner of education, then superintendent of schools in St. Louis, established the first public kindergarten, with Miss Susan Blow in charge. Miss Blow offered her serv

ices, having become an enthusiast in the new system of child-training. She acted in the capacity of both kindergartner and trainer and from her school have come the ablest and best known trainers in the field at the present time. St. Louis became the centre from which radiated in every direction the impetus to establish kindergartens all over the country, and Miss Blow, whose family were originally Virginians, has become the acknowledged leader of and interpreter for the whole kindergarten fraternity. Chiefly through the writings of Dr. Harris and Miss Blow the kindergarten has been put on its proper philosophic basis in this country and is fulfilling the prophecy of its creator, Friedrich Froebel, that the United States would be the best field for the development of his idea. Though attacked in many instances by what its founder would have considered educational heresies, it continues to grow in numbers and in public appreciation.

Kindergarten Associations.

The formation of kindergarten associations was the direct result of the St. Louis movement. These associations were largely composed of enthusiastic women who undertook to support one or more kindergartens for the purpose of demonstrating to the public school authorities the value of its training as a preparation for school work. In many instances the public kindergarten began in this way and was eventually adopted and supported by the school boards.

Such associations have sprung into being in all the Southern states and are, for the most part, full of life and energy. They have been very active in drawing attention to and creating interest in the kindergarten. In 1905, at the Knoxville, Tenn., summer school, and at the suggestion of Miss Amalie