36 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



Now, we want to bring out the facts, and unless we can 

 bring these young men to believe that it is for their interest 

 to go to this institution, they are not going there. That is 

 the reason why I ask the professor to state to this audience 

 what inducements this institution offers to the young man, 

 and whether he can tell him, when he graduates from the 

 school, what place he is to occupy in the community. That 

 strikes me as a little weak point. If he is a poor man — and 

 seven-eighths of your students are poor, — when they graduate, 

 they go from your institution with nothing but their diploma 

 — tell me where that young man can go ? Must he go on a 

 farm and work with common laborers ? For you farmers in 

 Connecticut cannot afford to pay for the skill that he has acquired 

 in the course of study that he has gone through. The med- 

 ical man levies a contribution for the time and money that he 

 has spent in acquiring his knowledge on all the families that 

 can afford to pay liim. What are you going to do with your 

 student when he graduates and goes out into the world to 

 engage in the battle of life ? Where are you going to place 

 him ? on a farm that is owned by a very rich man, to tell 

 him how to spend his money ? That is not farming. And 

 how is this institution to help the great mass of farmers ? 

 That is the class we want to reach. It is not the rich farm- 

 ers, the "fancy farmers," but the great mass of farmers of 

 the State and of New England. We want to see where we 

 can place this student so that he will help them and benefit 

 himself. In other words, what inducements can you offer 

 these poor young men to study in your institution. 



Dr. Armsby. It seems to me that Col. Warner has touched 

 on a problem which reaches very far beyond the limits of any 

 agricultural school ; at the same time, I should answer his 

 question somewhat in this way : that we can offer the young 

 man who comes to us a good education, which will enable 

 him to levy his contributions, not on tlie people that are 

 scattered here and there in the community, but on the forces 

 of nature, that are present every where, and on the riches 

 that she offers him in the soil and in the products that he 



