The American college-of-agriculture phase of education is now well established. It is the most highly developed agricultural education in the world. It is founded on the democratic principle that the man who actually tills the soil must be reached,--an idea that may not obtain in other countries. We are now attempting to extend this democratic education by means of agriculture to all ages of our people, and there is promise that we shall go farther in this process than any people has yet gone; and this fact, together with the absence of a peasantry, with the right of personal land-holding, and with a voice in the affairs of government, should give to the people of the United States the best country life that has yet been produced. America's contribution to the country-life situation is a new purpose and method in education, which is larger and freer than anything that has yet been developed elsewhere, and which it is difficult for the Old World fully to comprehend. The founding of the great line of public-maintained colleges and experiment stations means the application of science to the reconstruction of a society; and it is probably destined to be the most extensive and important application of the scientific method to social problems that is now anywhere under way. _The dangers in the situation._ It is not to extol our education experiment that I am making this discussion, but to measure the situation; and I think that there are perils ahead of us, which we should now recognize. There are two grave dangers in the organization of the present situation: (1) the danger that we shall not develop a harmonious plan, and thereby shall introduce competition rather than coöperation between agencies; (2) the danger that the newer agencies will not profit fully by our long experience in agriculture-teaching. An internal danger is the giving of instruction in colleges of agriculture that is not founded on good preparation of the student or is not organized on a sound educational basis. Winter-course and special students may be admitted, and extension work must be done; but the first responsibility of a college of agriculture is to give a good educational course: it deals with education rather than with agriculture, and its success in the end will depend on the reputation it makes with school men. There is also danger that new institutions will begin their extension work in advance of their academic educational work; whereas, extension and propaganda can really succeed only when there is a good background of real accomplishment at home.