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 EXPLANATION OF SENATE BILL No. 292, FOR THE ESTAB¬ 
 LISHMENT AND MAINTENANCE OF COUNTY FARM- 
 LIFE SCHOOLS AND FOR THE PROMOTION OF AGRI¬ 
 CULTURE AND HOME-MAKING, AND SOME REASONS 
 FOR ITS ENACTMENT. 
 
 EXPLANATION OF THE BILL. 
 
 Maintenance. —Five thousand dollars annually is provided for 
 maintenance and support—$2,500 to be supplied by State ap¬ 
 propriation when all required conditions are complied with by 
 the county and townships, and $2,500 to be supplied by the 
 county or township, or both, by taxation or otherwise. 
 
 Equipment. —Before any State appropriation is available, the 
 county, the township or townships, in which the school is lo¬ 
 cated, or all combined, must provide by donation or bond issue, 
 or both, the following equipment: a school building with 
 recitation rooms, laboratories and apparatus necessary for effi¬ 
 cient instruction in the prescribed subjects of study; dormitory 
 buildings with suitable accommodations for not less than twenty- 
 five boys and twenty-five girls; a barn and dairy building with 
 necessary equipment; a farm of not less than twenty-five acres 
 of good arable land, which may be reduced to ten acres upon 
 recommendation of the board of trustees and presentation of 
 satisfactory reasons therefor. The entire equipment must be 
 approved and accepted, after inspection, by the State Superin¬ 
 tendent of Public Instruction. All buildings must be located 
 on the farm and constructed in accordance with plans approved 
 by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, except that 
 a suitable and properly equipped school building already con¬ 
 structed, though not located on the farm, may be accepted as 
 part of the equipment, if located within reasonable and con¬ 
 venient distance thereof. 
 
 The machinery is provided for an election by the county or by 
 any township or townships to provide all or any part of the equip¬ 
 ment and maintenance by taxation and bond issue, if necessary. 
 The maximum bond issue by county and township cannot, how¬ 
 ever, exceed $25,000 for equipment. If an election for equip¬ 
 ment and maintenance be held by the county and fail, any 
 
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 township or any two or more contiguous townships may hold 
 an election and provide the necessary equipment and secure the 
 farm-life school. In that event, the board of trustees must be 
 selected from the township or townships, and free tuition is 
 restricted to the residents of said township or townships so 
 providing for the equipment and maintenance of the school. 
 Provision is made, however, for the county to take over at any 
 time any farm-life school that may be thus secured by a town¬ 
 ship or townships, and make it a farm-life school for the en¬ 
 tire county by assuming, by election, the tax and bond issue 
 for equipment and maintenance assumed by the township or 
 towmships, and relieving, by county bond issue and taxation, 
 the township or townships of obligations therefor. 
 
 Management and Location. —The school must be under the 
 control and the management of the board of trustees, consisting 
 of one member from each township in the county, appointed, by 
 the county board of education, with the county superintendent 
 as an ex officio member and secretary thereof. This board also 
 has authority to locate the school, after inviting and receiving 
 bids from the various townships, taking into consideration de¬ 
 sirability and suitability of location as well as the financial aid 
 for maintenance and equipment offered by the various town¬ 
 ships. The school cannot be located in any city or in any 
 town of more than one thousand inhabitants nor within three 
 miles of the corporate limits of any city or town of more than 
 five thousand inhabitants. This insures its location in a rural 
 community and farm-life atmosphere, allowing, however, the 
 utilization, by donation, of excellent and suitable school build¬ 
 ings in some of the smaller villages. All other buildings, how¬ 
 ever, are required in all cases to be located on the farm. 
 
 Aim and Location. —To prepare boys for agricultural pur¬ 
 suits and farm-life and to prepare girls for home-making and 
 housekeeping on the farm; to conduct agricultural and farm- 
 life demonstration and extension work throughout the county, 
 in cooperation with the State and National Departments of 
 Agriculture and the State College of Agriculture and Me¬ 
 chanic Arts; to hold township and district meetings for the 
 farmers and farmers’ wives in all parts of the county from 
 time to time; to cooperate with the county superintendent of 
 
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 public instruction and the public school teachers in stimulating, 
 directing, and supervising farm-life work in the public high 
 schools and elementary schools, and in providing instruction in 
 such work for the teachers through the county teachers’ asso¬ 
 ciation and through special short courses of study for public 
 school teachers; to provide, also, at said school short courses 
 ot study in farm-life subjects for adult farmers and their 
 wives, and to hold at the school county meetings for farmers 
 and their wives for instruction and demonstration work from 
 time to time. 
 
 High School Department. —Provision has been made for a 
 high school department to be maintained in connection with 
 each county farm-life school that may not be established at 
 the same place with some now existing county high school, and 
 for the merging of the county high school into the high school 
 department of the farm-life school in case tjie farm-life school 
 be located at the same place with a now existing rural high 
 school. This high school department is to receive for its main¬ 
 tenance the same appropriation from county and State as is 
 now provided for a first-class public high school under the 
 public high school act, and is to be under the complete control 
 and management of the board of trustees and the superintend¬ 
 ent of the county farm-life school, providing instruction in all 
 English branches in the same classes for students preparing 
 for farm life at home and students preparing for college. Tui¬ 
 tion, however, is to be free to all students in any farm-life 
 school and to all others attending the same residing m the 
 county, and the expense for hoard, etc., cannot exceecr actual 
 cost. Provision is also made for admission of students from 
 other counties upon payment of moderate tuition, sufficient to 
 cover actual expenses, to be fixed by the board of trustees. 
 
 Qualification of Teachers. —As will be seen by reading section 
 12 of the bill, provisions are made to guarantee the employment 
 of teachers properly qualified by education, special training, 
 and practical experience for the work required. 
 
 REASONS FOR ITS ENACTMENT. 
 
 More than eight-tenths of the population of North Carolina 
 live in the country and follow agricultural pursuits. More 
 
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 than eight-tenths of the children of North Carolina are coun¬ 
 try children. More than 95 per cent of these never enter col¬ 
 lege and never receive any preparation for citizenship or for 
 making a living except what they receive in the public schools 
 of their counties and communities. These farmers and these 
 children are entitled to better provision at home for better prep¬ 
 aration for the life that most of them will spend and ought 
 to spend on the farm, in the country, and for such education in 
 the school as will tend to turn them to country life, interest 
 them in it, and prepare them to live it more comfortably, more 
 contentedly, and more happily. 
 
 The farmers and the farmers’ children are entitled to be given 
 a chance to provide for themselves by taxation or donation (for 
 the chief burden of the maintenance and equipment of the 
 farm-life school will fall on them) these farm-life schools 
 adapted to the'needs of the children, the environment sur¬ 
 rounding them, and affording better preparation for their life- 
 work. All they ask is a chance to help themselves to do this, 
 and a little appropriation of $2,500 annually from the State 
 Treasury to stimulate and encourage this self-help. Shall they 
 not have this chance? 
 
 Some of the Benefits of Such Schools. —The country farm-life 
 school would become an intellectual, industrial, and agricul¬ 
 tural dynamo for the whole county. The instruction and train¬ 
 ing of scores of country boys and girls annually in the best 
 methods of farming, dairying, orcharding, stock judging and 
 stock raising; the handling and marketing of crops, cooking, 
 sewing, and other subjects pertaining to housekeeping and 
 home-making on the farm, would send them back to the farm 
 prepared to make farming more profitable, farm-life more 
 livable, farm homes more comfortable and more beautiful. 
 These in their various communities would become sources of 
 inspiration and disseminators of agricultural information and 
 objective demonstration for their neighbors, thereby greatly 
 aiding in the improvement of agricultural conditions of the 
 entire county and in increasing the wealth, the taxable values 
 of all property, and the general prosperity and progress of the 
 county and the State. In a word, the boys trained in such a 
 school would become, in their communities, eloquent apostles 
 
and living examples of better and more profitable farming, and 
 the girls so trained would become, in their homes, living epis¬ 
 tles known and read of all in the sweetest and finest of all arts, 
 the art of making a comfortable and beautiful home in the 
 best environment in the world for such a home—the very heart 
 of nature. 
 
 Such a school, in the second place, could and would, through 
 its faculty, carry on most valuable extension and demonstration 
 work among the farmers and their wives in all parts of the 
 county, meeting with them from time to time in their com¬ 
 munities for instruction and demonstration in all things per¬ 
 taining to their farm life and work, in this way carrying to 
 them the new truth and the new light, and pointing them to the 
 better way. From time to time, these farmers and their wives 
 could and would be gathered about the school for instruction, 
 for inspiration, for socializing, for organization and coopera¬ 
 tion. 
 
 In this and other ways such a school would indeed prove a 
 continual dynamo of agricultural interest and farm-life in¬ 
 struction and inspiration. Through it the larger agencies of 
 the A. and M. College, the State Department of Agriculture, 
 and the National Department of Agriculture could operate 
 more effectively and successfully, and the interest aroused by 
 these larger agencies could be husbanded, applied, and per¬ 
 manently continued. The work of the school could be cor¬ 
 related with the college, and many a boy and girl would be 
 inspired by the taste of better things to drink more deeply at 
 the larger fountain ever flowing in copious streams in their 
 colleges and to prepare themselves for splendid leadership. 
 
 Such a school would become a county training school for the 
 rank and file of the rural school teachers, in agricultural as 
 well as literary subjects. The head of the agricultural depart¬ 
 ment of such a school would be made the supervisor of agricul¬ 
 tural instruction in all the public schools of the county, and in 
 cooperation with the county superintendent, through instruction 
 of the county teachers in the meetings of their county teachers’ 
 association, and through visitation of the schools with the 
 county superintendent from time to time, could aid in creating 
 a farm-life atmosphere in the rural schools and in bringing into 
 
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 them such simple elementary instruction in agriculture as 
 would be made practical and effective through intelligent and 
 interested teachers under' intelligent instruction. It would be 
 altogether possible and practicable for successful work in agri¬ 
 culture, cooking, sewing, and other housekeeping subjects to be 
 carried on under supervision of the teachers in the county farm- 
 life school on a smaller scale in other high schools of the county, 
 and perhaps in a number of the other public schools, especially 
 in the local-tax schools with two or more teachers. 
 
 The whole lump would finally be leavened. Intelligence 
 would demand and more money would command for country 
 life, good roads, good schools, good churches, good vehicles, and 
 the thousands of comforts and conveniences that break up the 
 isolation of country life and bring into it all the best of city life 
 without its worst. Thus, indeed, by training the children to 
 find and make the most of the countless treasures God has hid¬ 
 den in soil and stream, in rock and tree, in plant and air and 
 cloud, would the country life be transformed into the ideal 
 life, and country men and women enter into the rich inherit¬ 
 ance prepared from the beginning for them—a healthful life 
 of freedom, fullness, sweetness, peace, and beauty. Then will 
 men desire it more, seek it more, and live it more contentedly 
 and happily. 
 
 Some will say that the picture is overdrawn. Hot so. 
 It but inadequately portrays what we have already seen 
 the beginning of in other favored portions of our own land. 
 Only through the portals of such a school as we have endeav¬ 
 ored to describe can our own country boys and girls enter into 
 and possess this promised land lying all about them. Shall we 
 provide it, or shall we not ? The cost of the schools will be as 
 nothing compared with the richness in money and in life that 
 they will bring through the passing years. If we can but start 
 them now and set them at their everlasting work, the battle 
 will be won, for the people, seeing and enjoying their benefi¬ 
 cent work, will be more able and more willing to give for their 
 maintenance and enlargement as the years go by. These schools 
 will become an organic part of the county school system, and 
 will bind the farmers in interest and enthusiasm more closely 
 
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 to the whole system and make it easier to secure the means 
 and the interest for the successful maintenance of the entire 
 system. 
 
 County schools of this sort are in successful operation in 
 many States of the Middle West. Perhaps the most successful 
 are those in the State of Wisconsin, which are very similar to 
 those provided for in this bill for North Carolina. About ten 
 years ago they began with one such school in Wisconsin. It 
 took hold of life and conditions in the country as they existed, 
 busied itself with the practical everyday problems and tasks 
 of farm life and work and with finding practical and more 
 profitable ways of doing these. It had to win its way slowly. 
 The farmers of the countv in which it was located had to he 
 convinced of its value and necessity by results obtained, by 
 the practical benefits they observed and derived from its work. 
 
 As the farmers of the county in which it was located saw 
 and felt the uplifting and transforming power of its work in 
 their homes and on their farms, they rallied enthusiastically to 
 its support, and it became their pride. Farmers of other coun¬ 
 ties began to take notice of its successful work, and some of the 
 more intelligent of them began to demand a similar school and 
 to work for it. There are now twenty-seven of these schools in 
 different sections of the State of Wisconsin. They form the 
 most effective means for disseminating among the masses of the 
 people a knowledge of farming and farm life, that has been 
 worth already millions of dollars in increased products on ac¬ 
 count of their improved quality; and Wisconsin has been trans¬ 
 formed into one of the leading agricultural States of this coun¬ 
 try, though her natural advantages of soil and climate do not 
 compare with those of North Carolina. What these schools 
 have been worth in the transformation of the life in the farm 
 homes, through the knowledge and training given to hundreds 
 of country girls in these schools, cannot he measured in paltry 
 dollars. These schools, therefore, are no longer an experiment, 
 hut a demonstrated success in other States. 
 
 The Demand for It. —Forty thousand farmers, through the 
 farmers’ unions of the State, have asked for these schools, have 
 indorsed this bill, and through committees of the State Farm¬ 
 ers’ Union have earnestly presented to the General Assembly 
 
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 their request for its enactment. The teachers and county su¬ 
 perintendents of public instruction of the State, by resolutions 
 and committees of the North Carolina Teachers’ Assembly and 
 of the State Association of County Superintendents, have unan¬ 
 imously asked for these schools and urged the passage of this 
 bill.