1652 Report of Farmers' Institutes 



gial or residual survival of earlier conditions — or if you want a 

 strictly up-to-date nietaplior — it is now only the veriform ap- 

 pendage of agricultural extension work, useless at the best and 

 likely at any moment to cause trouble. 



It ri spoken of as a creed outworn that must now give place to 

 colleges, secondary schools, extension schools, traveling libraries 

 and bulletins scientifically written and regularly mailed; and 

 above all, pedigogically arranged. 



I tell you Nay — for this splendid College of Agriculture 

 which no man is more eager to honor than I, is after all the herit- 

 age of the fanner who is already able, successful and strong, and 

 the same is true of the intellectual appeal made by the secondary 

 schools. Unfortunately many worthy men have never received that 

 amount of training which leads them to look naturally and easily 

 to the printed page for instruction. 



I grant that nothing is proclaimed in the institute that has not 

 been said before — and better said perhaps in books and bulletins 

 — yet always the world has recognized that there was something 

 in the human voice that was not in the printed page and always 

 this doctrine has been applied in those affairs of life where the 

 endeavor was either to teach or to persuade men. So another par- 

 able I declare unto you, " How shall they believe in whom they 

 have not heard and how shall they hear without a preacher and 

 how shall they preach unless they are sent." 



One thing about the institute work that all of you must have 

 thought of and wondered at is this — how little it has changed with 

 the years in mode of operatioUo It was stated, be it remembered, 

 by men who were untrained in the schools, who made no pretense 

 to knowledge of pedagogical methods, who had no models by which 

 to mould it — yet wonderful to tell, from the very beginning it fell 

 into almost the exact form in which we find it today. In the 

 winter of 1888, a very happy student boy, I sat in the gallery of 

 Library Hall and looked down on an institute with Woodward, 

 Curtis and Powell in command, that in audience, in method and in 

 spirit was very similar to the one that I attended yesterday. 



