Editing 78-01-A3 (section)

=== Transcript ===
"Give a hungry man a fish and he'll be hungry tomorrow. Teach him how to fish
and he'll never be hungry again." Unfortunately that ancient maxim has not always
guided us in our efforts to help others through foreign aid. But today I'd like to
tell you about a program that does meet that test.

A few months ago friends of mine in San Francisco told me of their interest in
helping something called the American Farm School. Thanks to them, Nancy and I
were visited by a young lady who works out of an office at 380 Madison Avenue, New
York City. The sign on that big city office door must seem a little strange to
native New Yorker is--"American Farm School."

If they'd drop in and ask a few questions they'd learn as we did from our
charming visitor that the American Farm School is about 20 minutes from downtown
Thessaloniki in northern Greece. It is an agricultural and technical training
center on 400 acres, with a girls' school featuring home economics and crafts
and a boys' school with specialties in Farm Machinery, Animal Husbandry, and
Horticulture. It was founded in 1904 and owes its existence to one man who had
a dream he made come true.

John Henry House, a Congregational minister, was a missionary in the Balkans
for 30 years. During that time he became increasingly aware of a sociological
trend. Village boys had learned to despise village life and made their way to the
cities. Reverend House believed a change in education could result in a new or
perhaps a revived belief that it was not degrading for educated people to work with
their hands.

Rev. House had that rare combination of the practical and the visionary. He
dreamed of founding an educational institution that would develop "the whole man,
the head, the heart and the hand." He believed that a school patterned after
Hampton Institute in Virginia, Tuskeegee in Alabama and the Penn School for girls
in South Carolina could train young people to be leaders, modern farmers and make
them content to stay down on the farm--down on the farm in Macedonia.

Rev . House was 60 years old in 1902 when he and two missionary friends bought
53 acres of parched, waterless land in a bandit - infested part of northern Greece.
If they were to convince their students to-be, they had to start with land as poor
as that of the poorest farmer. House had raised the money for the project himself.
The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions did not share his vision
and considered it outside the scope of the missionary endeavor for which he'd been
sent to the Balkans.

Rev. House was not a man to give up on a dream. He took his wife to see the
land he had chosen for his venture. Standing on the 53 windswept barren acres she
asked, "Whoever will you get to live in this place?" He answered, "You, my dear."
And live there she did. Thus was started the Thessloniki Agricultural and
Industrial Institute which was to become the American Farm School . I'll continue
this in my next broadcast and I'm sure you'll be a little more proud of America
the Beautiful.

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.
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