102 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Their education lias been acquired by reading and by posting themselves on 

 current events as given them through the press, — that greatest educator of the 

 age; by attoiidance upon public meetings held for the purpose of promoting 

 the farmers' interests; by social intercourse, and the interchanging of views 

 and of methods with their fellow farmers, and by that sternest of all teachers, 

 — experience. Many a farmer has made these means supply the place of a 

 school education so thoroughly as to raise him to a high position of confidence 

 and esteem in the community, and to enable him to accpiire a considerable 

 degree of wealth and worldly prosperity. But at what an expense of years of 

 hard labor, of repeated failures, of struggling against difficulties arising fre- 

 quently from a want of sufficient training in youth, has he finally acquired 

 that disciplined mind which has lead him on to fortune ! Go to such men and 

 ask them their opinion of the importance of education, and you will not find 

 them pointing to their own prosperity as an argument against the importance 

 of mental training. They are generally the very men who are the strongest 

 advocates of good schools, and who are found sending their children to the 

 union school, or to the higher institutions at Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti or Lan- 

 sing. Having felt the want of a better education themselves, they are the 

 more desirous of securing for their children this great advantage. 



But if education has been needed in the past, it will be found far more nec- 

 essary in the near future. The time is coming when no farmer ignorant of 

 the laws of nature, as revealed by modern science, can expect to succeed. The 

 farmer of the future will have to know something of chemistry, of botany, of 

 natural philosophy, and of kindred branches of science, of the laws of trade 

 and commerce, and of political economy. If then, I have sufficiently estab- 

 lished the importance to the farmer of education, let us consider the kind of 

 education most needed. If I should ask whether a knowledge of Greek, Latin, 

 French, and German, of Literature and Astronomy were essential to the 

 farmer, I presume I should be answered by a very positive and somewhat dis- 

 dainful '*N0." It is not these things, however desirable they may be to the 

 scholar, that you want, but it is a solid, practical knowledge of the funda- 

 mental branches. You want a school system which will prepare your sons for 

 a practical farmer's life, giving them a well-balanced and practical mind, 

 versed in all the rules and laws of ordinary business transactions, sufficiently 

 informed to guard them against all swindlers and impostors, liberal enough to 

 take up with all real improvements, and sufficiently acquainted with public 

 affairs to perform aright their duties as American citizens. 



If I mistake not, you desire to have your daughters so educated as to enable 

 them to adorn your homes and your social institutions by their graces and 

 charms, and at the same time preside over the domestic duties of your house- 

 holds in such a way as to make home the happiest place on earth to you. If 

 then, I am not mistaken in regard to the kind of education you want for your 

 children, it will perhaps be profitable to consider how this is to be acquired. 

 And this is a part of the subject which demands your most careful attention, 

 and which is far more worthy of your consideration than how to raise stock, or 

 how to produce the largest crops of wheat and corn. Not that I would depre- 

 ciate the importance of such topics, but what can, or at least ought, to be of 

 deeper concern to you than the education of the rising generation, who will 

 soon take your places on the farm, and upon whom depends the very life of the 

 nation? For it is to the agricultural population that this country must need 

 look for her chief support. Indeed, 'we can say without boasting, that the 



