FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 187 



Agriculture especially suffers from ii lack of definite facts, a lack owing 

 largely to the intricacies of the subject, but a lack which may perhaps give way 

 before a class of trained observers. These trained observers are now increasing: 

 in numbers, and the Agricultural College is doing some of its best work when 

 it helps to make them, 



I come now to the consideration of some of the moral uses of the labor sys- 

 tem, and I have first to say 



5. Manual labor throughout a four years' course of study inculcates the 

 opinion and the sentiment that farm labor is not degrading, that labor and 

 learning and culture are not incompatible. The sculptor works early and late. 

 His chisel and hammer are not idle, and the product, when it comes to view, 

 gives him honor. It is because there is revealed in it the superior thought- 

 work as well as hand-work of the artist. So with the architect. Now, let the 

 farmei''s work reveal activity of mind, as well as bodily routine, let it show 

 taste, and something of original skill, and honor will not be withheld merely 

 because he is employed in manual labor. But when manual labor is in subjec- 

 tion to habit merely, when it is unaccompanied by education and culture, it 

 will, however honorable it may be, take a low and unimportant place in the 

 esteem of men. But here, where labor is united to science, it becomes not only 

 not incompatible with culture, but is itself a source of culture. As the man- 

 agement of his work requires thought, and as curiosity is kept awake by the 

 relationship of scientific principles with what he sees about him, his intellectual 

 nature is quickened and its growth promoted ; and so he sees everywhere a 

 thousand beauties of form or plan or purpose that would have been unnoticed 

 but for his education, and his taste and enjoyment are enhanced. Take for ex- 

 ample the manifold beautiful ways in which plants protect their buds from the 

 frosts of winter, the many kinds of stores of food for the germinating stem, 

 or the ways in which they provide for the scattering of seeds, — these and a 

 thousand other things lie before the uneducated, not enjoyed because not seen. 

 But the free play of thought and the relish of the beautiful can lift hard work 

 out of the condition of drudgery into that of honor and pleasure. 



G. The College hopes to send out into the various parts of the State educated 

 young men who shall enter upon farming as their business. We cannot of 

 course expect to educate the mass of young farmers, as the law and medical 

 schools might educate the practitioners in tliosc professions. Farmers are not 

 numbered by hundreds, but by tens of thousands. But education is a leaven 

 whose influence permeates the mass around it. The presence of a few educated 

 farmers in each county would not be small. 



Many remedies are suggested for the abandonment of the farm by the young 

 men of the country. The inducements to go into the professions or into mer- 

 cantile pursuits are very strong with the young. It would not do for an Agri- 

 cultural College to strengthen these influences by breaking up the habits of 

 farm labor with which the student generally comes to us, and permitting a 

 taste to be created averse to manual labor. This opinion has been the subject 

 of ridicule, far and near, but I cannot help feeling that it is very important. 

 The language of our catalogue seems to me to put tlie case properly. It says 

 of manual labor, *' The preservation of health, and the cultivation of a taste 

 for agricultural inirsuits are two other important objects. Four years of study, 

 ■without labor, wholly removed from syni[)atliy with the laboring world, during 

 the period of life when habits and tastes are rapidly formed, will almost inevit- 

 ably produce disinclination, if not inability to perform the work and duties of 

 the farm. But to accomplish the objects of tlie institution it is evident that 



