394 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



blood through your system. Go outside of yourselves, into prac- 

 tical life, aud what do you find ? You cannot take up a hoe, a 

 shovel, a crowbar, or an axe, you cannot harness your horse or 

 yoke your ox, you cannot do anything except by the application of 

 those principles that have been exemplified here this afternoon. 

 Wheeling a barrow, lifting a basket of potatoes or a bushel of corn, 

 whatever motion is produced is the result of those same laws, of 

 which we have had these illustrations so clearly and beautifully 

 given to us this afternoon. 



You may say, "All this may be true, but still I do not see the 

 application quite yet." The application will come in this way : A 

 school of this character, founded, made permanent, and perfected, 

 will be a means for the diffusion of that element in labor for which 

 now the soul of the farmer "groans and travails in pain," and that 

 element is intelligence. How often do we hire a man and send him 

 into the field to do the work of our farm, paying him a dollar or a 

 dollar and a half a day, and find that half his labor, and sometimes 

 more, has been wasted, for want of just this practical knowledge, 

 — for the want of the application of established law to the common 

 operations of life, and for no other reason in the world. Half his 

 strength in wielding the axe is lost ; 75 or 95 per cent, of it many 

 times lost in the use of the crowbar! How often do you see a 

 great lubberly man, with 180 or 200 pounds of human flesh, trying 

 to move a rock I He gets the crowbar under it, and wriggles, and 

 lifts, and prys, and finally gives it up, having spent two or three 

 hours, for which you pay him twenty cents an hour. It is all lost. 

 Another man, boasting only 115 pounds of muscle, comes along, 

 takes up the crowbar, puts in at just the right place, and over goes 

 the rock. It is intelligent labor applied to the rock ; that is all. , 



So, I say, this kind of education, instilled into the minds of 

 young men, when perfected and brought to maturit}^ will be made 

 available, through them, in the community, wherever they may 

 go. It will be so much of the leaven which we hope will be dif- 

 fused into the common mass of liuinanity, by which the wliole 

 may be leavened, and brouglit uj), by-and-by, to the standard of 

 intelligent labor, so that intelligent labor shall be n)ade to match 

 the mechanical instruments we now have, by which to abbreviate 

 the hours of our labor and lighten tire severity of our toil. In 

 this way these principles may be made applicable, and valuable, 

 and effective. I admit that the end to be attained is not within 

 our reach. You cannot quite see it to-day. It will not be avail- 



