ANNXJAI. MEETING. 56 



as large a proportiou of success as you have done they must do it by 

 different methods, though not necessarily less effort. Times have 

 changed, as I have tried to emphasize this afternoon. 



To you who appreciate the value of training not merely for the facts 

 it gives, but for the strength secured and the ability developed to meet 

 new and unexpected emergencies and grappel with new and perplexing 

 problems, and a larger power to get enjoyment out of that which it is 

 necessary for us to do, I suggest the opportunity is yours to direct the 

 young men of your respective communities to the value and importance 

 of such training, little matter it whether it is secured at farmers' insti- 

 tutes, visits to the fairs, where the best of stock and crops are available 

 for comparison, or a course, long or short, at the agricultural college. 

 Many a young man is satisfied with less than he might have because he 

 does not know it is within his reach if he only knew it and would go 

 after it. 



The methods of teaching in our colleges have undergone great devel- 

 opment, as has agriculture. Today courses are vastly more helpful than 

 when the agricultural college and its professors were both new to their 

 work. Now the student handles and selects corn, goes over scores of 

 animals as critically as does the fair judge; he makes butter and manipu- 

 lates the soil and compounds spraying mixtures that he may correctly 

 understand the relation of principles of "the why" to the practice. Agri- 

 culture, unlike mathematics, is not an exact science; land, plus seed, pins 

 cultivation, plus harvest, don't necessarily make a crop. But a knowl- 

 edge of fundamental principles, plus experience, plus good common sense, 

 is sure to make a larger success than without either or all. The college 

 offers the first only, the degi-ee to which it may be useful depends almost 

 enl,irely on the individual. No amount of it will entirely make up, how 

 ever, for the absence of one or both of the others. Time does not perrair 

 further discussion of this immense subject. I chose it because I believn 

 that a larger use of the helps for better agriculture will result from in- 

 creased knowledge of what they are and how close at hand they lie. 



Professor J. H. Skinner, of Purdue University, addressed the 

 meeting as follows : 



I don't know that what I shall say this afternoon will be of very 

 great interest to the men here assembled; but it seems to me, after look- 

 ing over the State House today, that our State really needs an organiza- 

 tion that will unify all of the interests represented here. The State 

 House is congested this week, people are wanting places to meet, men 

 are going here and there, not knowing where they Avill find this associa- 

 tion or that association. I have an idea that we should have something 

 in the nature of a State live stock association. There are only a few 

 men here interested in the various State organizations of live stock 



