STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. Ill 



simply means that this is the product of civilization and the 

 highest product of civilization, when people who are on the down 

 hill side of life are still studying how to do better that to which 

 they have devoted their lives. I have devoted my life, so far 

 as I have lived yet, to the purpose of education, and the more I 

 see of it the more I think it is a noble work. Now this is educa- 

 tion. You are in the business of education. The only differ- 

 ence between those who are actually producing work and fur- 

 nishing the markets of the world with their products, and those 

 who are teaching school, is that the ones who are teaching the 

 young ones, the children, the beginners, are leading them up so 

 that they may be able afterwards to study and teach themselves. 

 You are teaching yourselves here when you are working on these 

 things, and it is the greatest pleasure to me to see that it is not 

 all young people that are studying and working. It is the salva- 

 tion of the nation when all the people are studying for better 

 methods. Why, such a meeting as this would have been abso- 

 lutely impossible a little over a half century ago. Do you know 

 that the first time that any one ever thought of having a com- 

 parison of products and industries of two nations was just fifty 

 years ago, — only fifty years ago. A hundred years ago, and 

 two hundred and five hundred years ago, people never got 

 together except to fight. That is a fact. Meetings of savages 

 were for the purpose of fighting. Men never assembled together 

 in savage times except either to prepare for a war or to actually 

 do the fighting. The few who had to labor, for instance, and 

 that in the case of the savages is very often the woman, — were 

 allowed to do and expected to do just enough to maintain life, 

 but the real business of life was war. And the few who had the 

 education and knowledge were a separate set by themselves. 

 So most of the savage tribes had their men who were separate, 

 called soothsayers or medicine men, or whatever they might call 

 them, who in themselves were possessed of all the knowledge 

 of the tribe or nation. And even after great cities were built 

 and after great nations began to grow, the people who considered 

 themselves the people and the leaders of the world and of their 

 nation knew nothing, either in letters or in practical affairs. 

 They left that to those who were especially set aside for it. And 

 in the Middle Ages, learning, agriculture, what little of science 

 there was, was left entirely to the monks in the cloistered monas- 



