■iSi STATE IJOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. 



vantages cdncatloDally to the student could warrant the college in endeavoring 

 to keep up a compulsory system of manual labor. 



I propose, therefore, in a jilain \vay to examine some of the advantages of 

 the labor system. 



There are physical, intellectual, and moral results of a labor system, and 

 these we will examine in order. 



1. "We hope by the labor system to have our graduates possessed of that 

 .physical hardiness tiiat is required in the farmer. The runner, the wrestler, 

 the rower, inure themselves to their play. The military school exercises the 

 :^-. scholars in daily and long-continued drill. Why should not he who is prepar- 

 ing for a more useful occupation maintain by a proper exercise of his muscles 

 the strength he will liereaftcr need. I find in the University Medical Journal 

 for April, 1871, a statement l)y Elomer 0. Hitchcock, M. D., of Kalamazoo, 

 ihat is in place here. He says: For the most perfect and healthful develop- 

 •', ment of the body, it is absolutely uecessary that the muscular system should, 

 while the body is maturing, be developed by the habitual use of all the muscles, 

 and this cannot be attained, at least so well, in any other way, as by actual 

 . labor. When the muscular system is thus developed, the digestion is made 

 })Owerful, the lungs are enlarged by increased respiration, and the blood, more 

 , l>erfoctly depurated, increases the size and especially the functional activity of 

 .the braiu. "A very large majority of the secondary callings," says Gail Ham- 

 .ilton, Atlantic Monthly, July, 18(34, "remove men from the open air, often 

 .from the sunshine, and generally train one or a few faculties at the expense of 

 \the others."' "The shoemaker must bend over his lapstone, and he becomes 

 stooping and hollow-chested. The blacksmith twists the sinews of his arms to 

 strength, but at tlie expense of his other members. The watchmaker trains 

 his eyes to microscopic vision, but his muscles are small and his skin colorless. 

 The artisan carries skill to perfection, the genius towers into sublimity, but 

 the man suffers. Not so the farmers. His life is not only many-, but all- 

 sided. His everchanging employment gives him every variety of motion and 

 posture. Not a muscle but is pressed into service. His work lies chiefly out 

 of doors. The freedom of eartli and sky are his." We think there is no bet- 

 ter way to secure and maintain this needed health and hardiness than daily 

 manual labor on farm or in garden. 



2. We give the beginning of a wide range of practice in farming, horticult- 

 ural and other practical operations. In a narrow routine of labor, such as is 

 generally practiced on any one farm, our labor cannot take the place of home 

 drill. If a farmer were to send one son to the Agricultural College for four 

 years and keep another meanwhile at work with himself, it is altogether prob- 

 able that the home boy would at the expiration of the time be a better plow- 

 man, the better handler of farming implements and of stock. He has given 

 his time to it, while his brother has given two-thirds of his to study, and has 

 had his limited amount of labor divided up and shared by many things that 

 •were wholly neglected at home. The college youth would appear at first no 

 •doubt at disadvantage. It is practice that makes perfect, and there are hundreds 

 •of manual operations upon a farm that can be done well only through such 

 jin-actice. Tiie same thing is true of the graduates of all professional schools ; 

 they are, so far as skill goes, behind those who have been content to secure 

 skill only, and to neglect the scientific study that would enable them to under- 

 •stand the operations they have learned to perform. 



On the other hand the range of objects in which the beginning of skill is 

 .acquired is very large. JS'ot only is a larger number of crops and of varieties 



