520 WISCONSIN AGRICULTUEE. 



ment, not, perhaps, completely, but partially, at every step, for 

 the reason that we have but slight foot-hold upon those laws of 

 nature upon which success depends. Yet all these succes- 

 ses and failures, as shown in the annual exhibitions of the 

 Society, tend to teach them; but in such a qualified, ques- 

 tionable, and fragmentary manner, that by far the greater part 

 is useless. Had the Society a Farm School, where the philoso- 

 phy of practice and the science of schools might mingle and 

 perfect each other — where all that is proved in practical labor, 

 and all that is true in scholastic science, could be blended in one 

 concrete mass, affording a substantial foundation for the more 

 elevated up-building of the industrial labor of the State — a farm 

 school within whose ample fields and halls the State Society 

 might hold its annual Fairs, thus giving to each laborer an oppor- 

 tunity to prove or disprove the correctness of his theory or prac- 

 tice — where the practical labor of the State could compare the 

 results of its toil with the more pretentious ones of the school — 

 a point where each isolated fact could be concencrated, combined 

 with others and made practical — ^where the progress of labor 

 could be noted, the principles upon which it depends developed, 

 and thus substantial advancement secured, and thus the school 

 be as the Mistress of Labor and the Master of Science. The 

 need of labor is too great to be profitably mocked with here a 

 bone and there a crust — its wants too great to be satisfied with such 

 fostering care as may be found in a leanto of some overshadow- 

 ing edifice. The winds and tides no longer command commerce, 

 because commerce concentrates capital^ and a half million experi- 

 ment is readily made, and commerce is finally eminently succes- 

 ful. But agriculture diffuses wealth, while affording to all other 

 pursuits the means of concentration ; thus labor not unfrequently 

 appears as a petitioner for a moity of that which its own munifi- 

 cence has bestowed. 



The greatest wealth of the State consists, first, in the moral 

 and political purity, and the intellectual culture of its inhabit- 

 ants. Secondly, in the productive character of its industrial 

 pursuits, and the fertility of its soil. Comparatively productive 

 as our agricultural labor no doubt is, yet, in most cases, it is so 



