106 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



usefulness realized in the production of educated power instead of 

 educated helplessness. 



"We thank you," said the Iroquois Chief (in the year seventeen 

 hundred and seventy-four) to the Government of Virginia, which had 

 offered to educate sonic of their young men, " we have already had 

 experience of your education, and some whom you have educated in 

 all your sciences come hack to us had runners, ignorant of woodcraft, 

 unable to trap a deer, snare a fish, to build a wigwam ; we cannot 

 accept your offer, though we appreciate your good will, but we will 

 take a tew of your sons and make men of them." 



Something like this the people have been saying to the Universities 

 founded upon the munificence of the State and nation, not becae 

 they do not appreciate education, hut because tin// do. They know 

 that it costs more to hang a man. to hoard and lodge a man at San 

 Quentin. than it would to teach him the duties and responsibilities 

 of American citizenship, and how to get an honest living; that it 

 costs far more to maintain a system of demagogy than of pedagogy. 

 They know that where five agricultural scientists could obtain em- 

 ployment, five thousand skillful, intelligent farmers are needed to-day 

 in our own State. The friends of the so-called higher education 

 should be willing to see the University filling the present need of 

 technical training in agriculture and the arts, making practical work- 

 ers, as well as thinkers, of its students, thus supplying the means of 

 its ideal perfection. 



The technical school in which we are most directly interested is 

 that which gives us teachers. Without the right kind of teachers, no 

 reform is possible. The one business which it should be the special 

 concern of the State to maintain in honor, which should he kept 

 free from political or sectarian influences, which should he entered 

 into with zeal and consecrated ability, and never as a make-shift, is 

 education. The educator, whether of the school or the press, stands 

 at the point of power, and holds the highest office in the social 

 economy. 



The work of organizing the national education is now claiming the 

 attention of scholars and patriots. Such an organization, in its 

 higher and lower stages, will be impartial in its bearings upon intel- 

 lect and industry, impartial as to sex, making a boy's training pre- 

 paratory to a man's work, and girl's to a woman's, wife's, mother's 

 work, and in both will recognize the intrinsic dignity of self-support. 



The graduate of the National School of Pedagogy, or Normal 

 School, will have the same relation to the government that the 

 graduate of Wesl Point or of the Naval Academy has. and thus, step 

 by step, the hitherto unrewarded and despised profession of teaching 

 shall be exalted and ennobled. Do I believe in this good time com- 

 ing? Most assuredly I do. The time has already come when war is 

 no longer a necessity, and thai nation is the most civilized which can 

 most easily dispense with it. The reign of words, too, is almostover; 

 dogmas, religious or political, no longer fetter the nations; thought 

 is tree as air. Literature must take the back seat; while the arts, 

 leading science, make the circuit of the world. Between the stand- 

 ing armies of soldiers, which tell how imperfect still is human gov- 

 ernment, and the sitting armies of sophists, whose mission it is to 

 perpetuate existing evil-, another great army is being drilled — the 

 army of labor — in which we shall find the most practical philosophy, 

 the broadest intelligence, and the most Christian patriotism. 



