TABLE I.

Rates per hour: Man hours, 13 1-3 c.; horse hours, 10 c.

Some figures on the cost of feeding dairy cows for the production of milk are very interesting. The average cost of feeding and caring for an animal from its birth until it became an adult, which was about two years, secured by keeping accurate record of a dairy herd in Wisconsin, shows that under a very simple system of management the cost of feed and labor amounted to $50.08. The cost of feed during this period was $42.01. The cost of labor was $8.07. The feed was charged at market prices, man labor at 12 cents per hour and horse labor at 10 cents per hour. The young stock were pastured for about three months during the summer, for which there was no labor charged. An interesting fact in connection with this is that for the first two months the cost of both feed and labor was the greatest of any part of this period. During the winter months it remained fairly uniform and was the lowest during the summer.

Another line of work which has received considerable attention in our office it what might be called conducting an agricultural survey. This is a canvass of all the farmers in a township and securing complete data on the incomes and expenses of the farm. In this work, attention was given to the early training and preparations for farm life and one of the most interesting deductions from farm surveys in New Hampshire is that the average net income from farmers which received a high school training was considerable above the income from farmers who only attended the district school.

THE NEEDS OF OUR RURAL SCHOOLS

By MISS SARA C. LOVEJOY, State College, Pa.

The needs of our rural schools are fundamentally the same as those of all schools, based on the common object of all education. Every one who aspires to the name, "Educator," and even those of us who can claim no higher title than "teacher" are thinking some pet theory as to what education really is, but from the many definitions, as numerous as are the definers, we may select as one of the best that of a leading college president: "The object of all education," he says, "is to train men and women for intelligent citizenship." The schools of our rural communities should, therefore, fit the boys and girls for their duties as men and women. Are they doing this?

Before we can answer this question we must consider what these duties are for which training is needed. First for the home, the one institution of our land in which all the people share, and in the building of which every one has a part. We have long recognized that boys who were to become physicians, ministers, or engineers must be especially trained for their professions. It is time that people admitted that home-building is no less a profession than are these others and that they who are to administer the work of the household should be definitely trained.