AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 87 



tunity than there is in farming today. But the price of success 

 is work, and eternal vigilance. You may not find a million 

 dollars on your farm ; you may not find a gold mine ; you may 

 not be successful in five years, but in a life time you can be. The 

 point of time will come early in life with those men whom you 

 envy on account of their salaries when they will be crowded out 

 by younger and fresher men, but the farmer's work goes on with 

 increasing results as the years of his life go by, so that his last 

 years may be his best years. We ought to have agricultural 

 teaching in our high schools. The farmers pay their share of 

 the bills. Can we not bring this about? I find in looking the 

 matter over that the state of Minnesota established a secondary 

 course of study at the university, and even when there was but 

 that one school in the state and that at the university, it became 

 popular, having some years as many as 300 students. And I 

 find on further investigation that that example has been followed. 

 The state of Wisconsin, for instance, has gone further. They 

 have made a provision whereby the state will appropriate twenty- 

 five hundred dollars for the establishment of an agricultural 

 school in any county that accepts it, and there is also a provision 

 made that the school shall have three acres of land where the 

 teachings may be demonstrated. Other states are taking up this 

 matter of education for farmers and establishing agricultural 

 courses in the secondary schools. If we had had those courses 

 established previous to the introduction of the study of agricul- 

 ture into the common schools, then there would have been insti- 

 tutions where the teachers might have fitted themselves for the 

 teaching of agriculture. 



I will now speak about agricultural colleges. What are these 

 agricultural colleges ? There is one in every state. The United 

 States government made an appropriation to establish them. It 

 gave that appropriation to the state and the state established the 

 colleges. In some states they are called colleges of agriculture ; 

 in others, colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts ; in some 

 they are called universities. In the state of Massachusetts we 

 have a college of agriculture. I think it is the only public insti- 

 tution in this country where agriculture is the only thing taught. 

 That institution has an income of $75,000, an income almost 

 equal to that of the University of Maine, and there are eighteen 

 or twenty professors and about 150 students. This institution 



