FOLLY OF MODERN FRANCE A NATION'S LOSS IN AGRICULTURE

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 18, 6 May 1909, Page 691

FOLLY OF MODERN FRANCE A NATION'S LOSS IN AGRICULTURE

In the course of a series of articles, contributed to the Boston Traveler, M. Alvan F. Sanborn, a non-Catholic writer, says: — In mediaeval France, as in all mediaeval Europe, monks preserved the agricultural traditions handed down by the Romans, cleared the land and taught the ignorant populations grouped about their abbeys how to cultivate their fields. They did more than this. They made farming respectable, at a time when fighting was the only profession held in honor, by bringing about a union jdf agriculture and Teligion, of ' the cross and the plough : (cruce et aratro). Throughout the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries the different branches of the Church continued

to protect' and encourage farming. The village priest in the south-west of France, who transformed his parish by commanding that a fruit tree be planted every time there was a baptism, was a type .of a large class. What is now understood as agricultural instruction, that is agricultural instruction based on exact science, is of course a modern thing, as exact science is itself a modern thing. ' The churchmen were among the first, if not the first, to appreciate the magnificent results that might be obtained by applying' the discoveries of science to farming and to act vigorously upon their knowledge. Shortly before the middle of the last century They Introduced Agricultural Courses into a number of seminaries and the schools of preparation for the seminaries and into certain orphanages. In 1847 the Brothers of the Christian Schools in the department of Seine-et-Oise co-operated with the toes! agricultural societies and with such public-spirited landholders as Alexis and Edouard de Tocqueville to found an^ institute of higher agriculture at Beauvais and to provide agricultural instruction throughout the department for punifc of all ages and conditions. Under the Second Empire and under the Third Hepublic up to 1901 chairs of agriculture were founded in the Catholic Universities of Lille, Lyons, and Paris; a higher school , of agriculture was . attached to the ' Catholic University at Angers; the Agricultural Institute of Notre Dame was organised at Pau by the Benedictines; and the Jesuit school of the Rue de Vaugirard (Paris), famous for its success in preparing candidates for admission to the Polytechnic* school and to the military school of Saint-Cyr undertook to prepare candidates for the great National^ Agronomic Institute also. During these same periods the various religious Orders coyered the entire country with a network of boarding schools, of the same grade as the so-called ' Practical Schools ' and ' Farm Schools ' of the Government, in which the teaching of agriculture was given the first place. Thy Brothers of Ploermel, directed by a remarkable character, Frere Abel, organised in Brittany and in that part of Normandy adjacent to Brittany a group of ten or a dozen agricultural schools which quickly wrought a tremendous change in the farming methods of those hitherto backward regions. In the other provinces the Brothers of the Christian Schools organised a large number of similar establishments in several of which a specialty was made of floriculture and horticulture. <The Marist Brothers gave thorough agricultural training in twenty-eight i.f their higher grade schools, and the Brothers of Saint Gabriel, the Brothers of the Cross of Jesus, the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine, the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, and the Brothers of the Holy Family also gave an " important place in their educational institutions to 'agriculture. These Religious Farming Schools possessed a number of advantages over the governmental farming schools of the corresponding grades. Their courses covered a larger number of years. Their teachers were on much better terms, not only with the great landed proprietors, but also with the small farmers and peasants of their districts than were the more academic teachers of the governmental schools. Being unhampered by governmental red tape, these schools were more easily adapted to the special needs of the regions from which they drew their pupils — to cheese-making, beet-raising, silk-worm cultnre, vine-growing, cider-making, etc. A larger proportion of their graduates became actual farmers (at the school of _Ducey every one during a term of years), because they were not tempted to scramble for Government jobs. Finally these graduates became almost invariably intellectual and moral leaders in their rural communities in which they settled, because they had been taught to regard their farming as a sort of religious mission and because the " Brothers who had taught them never lost sight of the men they had modelled. Not content with teaching" agriculture in their boarding schools, the religious Orders introduced the teaching of agriculture or horticulture into tlieir rural primary schools. The Marist Brothers, in most of their 750 schools; the Brothers of the Christian Schools, in their numerous primary establishments; the Brothers of SaintGabriel, and most of the other Orders which have been mentioned, undertook to create in the youngest children an interest in the every-day activities of the farm and to prepare their minds for the taking up of agricultural studies later on. Some of the best agricultural textbooks for very young people in existence were prepared and published by these Brothers. Furthermore, the Brothers of Saint Francois-Regis, the Brothers of the Christian Schools, the Brothers of Ploermel, the Brothers of the Holy Spirit, the Marianite Brothers, the Marist Brothers, the Brothers of Saint Francis of Assisi, the Brothers of

Saint Viator, the Brothers of Marie and the Fathers and Brothers of Dom Bosco

Taught Practical Farming in from 100 to 150 of their orphanages for boys. Several Orders of .Sisters (particularly the Sisters of Charity « f Saint Vincent de Paul) gave courses in subjects designed to attach country girls to the farms and to make of them model farmers' wives in a number of their schools and in a score of their orphanages. Just how many of the religious establishments in which farming was taught were closed by the law against the Congregations it is impossible to learn exactly at the present writing. The Ministry of Public Instruction and the Ministry of Agriculture, to which I applied for information, were very careful not to furnish any. The librarian of the Society of the- Agriculturists of France (a gigantic national organisation which has done more than any one agency to encourage both private and governmental teaching of agriculture), assures me that all the religious agricultural schools have disappeared except the institutes cf Beauvais and Angers and possibly two or three of the boarding schools which have been transferred to other hands. It is to be hoped that the situation is not ■ quite so ' bad as he affirms ; for, in this case, the total of the agricultural instruction given in France would be reduced almost one-half — the religious agricultural schools having been nearly as numerous as the State agricultural schools. But, at the very best, when every allowance for error on his part has been made, the fact remains that, in an essentially agricultural country, a large amount of admirable agricultural teaching has been wantonly suppressed and that no provision has yet been made to' replace it. It would not be easy to discover an example of greater folly in the history of modern peoples. France, like the silly character of the fable, -has deliberately killed the goose that laid the golden egg.