The Spirit of Democracy. Charles Fletcher Dole. Chapter XXIX, "The Education for a Democracy." Crowell & Co. The Education of the Boy of To-morrow. A. D. Dean. _World's Work_, April, 1911. Prize essay. College and the Rural Districts. W. N. Stearns. _Education_, April, 1911. The Boy Problem. Educational pamphlet No. 4. Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, N.Y. 10 cents. Treats ably the question of social purity. Genesis. A Manual for Instruction of Children in Matters of Sex. B. S. Talmey, M.D. Practitioners' Publishing Company, N.Y. CHAPTER XIV _THE FARM BOY'S INTEREST IN THE BUSINESS_ The theory that the boys and girls who grow up in the country must in time become settled in farm homes of their own has neither logic nor psychology nor common sense to support it. It is never a question of whether or not a boy will take up the work of his father, but whether or not he will find at length the true and only calling for which his nature is best fitted. If the parents of the country boy will keep the latter question clearly in mind, many a problem in the latter's rearing will be made much easier. In order to break the monotony of the style of expression, much of this chapter will be addressed somewhat directly to the father of the country boy. WHAT IS IN YOUR BOY? If a man should come suddenly into possession of a piece of land having a productive soil, one of his first questions in regard to the soil would be, What will it best grow? Farmers blundered and starved along for generations in an attempt to make a first-class farm produce the wrong crops, or to produce the right crop through the wrong manner of treatment; and this simply because they used methods of tradition and guess rather than those of science. Now apply the foregoing situation to the boy problem, if you will. So long as we attempt to secure from him the wrong results and deal with him by wrong methods, we are likely to conclude that there is "nothing in him." Therefore, in order to act intelligently and helpfully in the matter of giving the young son a business relation to farm life, it is first necessary to determine, as far as may be possible, the bent of his mind, remembering that the great artist, the great writer, or the great captain of industry is just as likely to be born in the country home as elsewhere. In fact, we shall learn in time, much to our advantage, that there must be a careful sifting process which will result in sending some of the country-bred young men directly to their important places in the city, and some of the city-bred youths to the rural industries. MUCH EXPERIMENTATION NECESSARY