HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE STATE COLLEGE. 



Its Aims and Methods. 



It needs no argument, in this day, to prove that knowledge is 

 power, that the educated man is the successful one — not only in 

 the professions which are usually regarded as "learned," but in 

 all the industrial avocations of man. In the arts, in factories, in 

 manufacturing establishments — educated men are being employed 

 in preference to those not educated, and the proprietors of these 

 works, in every instance possible, apply the principles of science 

 and education to the prosecution of their business, and to the 

 saving of material and manual labor. In some large establish- 

 ments, educated men are employed whose sole duty it is to keep 

 the concern informed upon every discovery and improvement 

 which is made by science affecting the prosecution of their busi- 

 ness, that it may take advantage of the same, and produce goods 

 as cheaply as other establishments, and be enabled to successfully 

 compete with them in the markets of the world. And what is 

 true in the arts is true also of agriculture. In all its varied and 

 intricate processes it demands the assistance of science and edu- 

 cation, and where these are judiciously applied, the work of the 

 farm is more intelligently pursued and the results far more satis- 

 factory. In breeding domestic animals, in the vari )us processes 

 of the field and garden, in the training and care of fruit trees, in 

 compassing the hosts of insect foes, and in numerous other direc- 

 tions the aid rendered by science and by educated brains is of 

 vast importance. In our own country, agricultural and industrial 

 education has been a thing of recent origin and slow growth ; 

 while in England and on the continent of Europe, agricultural 

 education has long been recognized and promoted by government, 

 and the number ofschools, colleges, experiment stations, seed-control 

 stations, and similar institutions for instruction in scientific agri- 



