270 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTUEE. 



men bejir the j^alni. Columbu?, De Soto, and La Salle, who opened this new 

 world of ours, were all trained in the schools of their time. 



In the first rough work of pioneer life there seems more call for mere endur- 

 ance and less foresight; hut the number of educated men and women who have 

 made their influence felt even here is decidedly out of proportion with our 

 expectations. 



When we look at the work of inventing the practical machinery which 

 seems to have so large a share in the effectiveness of the discoveries almost 

 always preceding, it seems at first that long practice in the work to be done 

 must be the chief element of power here. Economists have naturally inferred 

 this, and undoubtedly there is some ground for the expectation ; but it is sur- 

 prising to find how much education does for the inventor, if we may judge 

 from the prominent, world moving efforts. Making every allowance for inborn 

 genius and daily contact with toil, we have still to thank education. Without 

 stopping upon the early inventions, the origin of which is in doubt, let us begin 

 with James Watt, inventor of the steam engine. His schooling and private 

 study, with a mechanical trade, fitted him for a help to students and professors 

 in the university, within whoso limits he long dwelt. There, after mature 

 study of jDrinciples and natural laws, he devised the engine and some of its 

 applications. Kobert Fulton's success in the steamship was preceded by train- 

 ing, first as an artist, then as a civil engineer, and last in long years of study 

 in science and language. Though George Stephenson, inventor of the locomo- 

 tive, lacked all the facilities for education, he sought in every way to make up 

 his deficiency by study, and at the same time showed his appreciation of its 

 advantage by spending every spare cent of his earnings to give his son Robert 

 what he himself had lacked. Edmund Cartwright, a clergyman, set the power 

 loom at its work, and Eli Whitney, a law student and schoolmaster, modeled 

 the cotton-gin. I make no mention here of work quite as essential, but more 

 quietly done, that brings all the arts of the chemist in play, bleaching and siz- 

 ing and dyeing and drying, staining, annealing, extracting, purifying, tempering, 

 and endless other things, because these are less understood, and all their bear- 

 ings could scarcely be appreciated without fuller explanations than are possible 

 here. The same reason excludes a host of illustrations from the application of 

 mechanical laws too intricate for most of us to appreciate. But we can all 

 understand that the telegraph could not spring from an uneducated brain ; and 

 if, as is reported, its benefits are to be multiplied a hundred fold, we shall 

 expect rightly to hear that education preceded the drill Avhich fitted the 

 inventor. Said my college acquaintance, as he unfolded the jirocess by which 

 he had reached this grand outlook, " Invention is a si^ecial science, and it 

 needs a long preparation to be able to catch the little threads of thought that 

 are woven into a new machine." 



I have dwelt somewhat longer than I would on this province of usefulness, 

 because we are apt to suppose that civilization does so much for us to-day as to 

 make deep and careful thinking unnecessary. Says a young friend, "It don't 

 cost much to be smart nowadays, there are so many helps ; books of reference 

 innumerable, machines indefinite, even opinions ready made." But how 

 quickly the world will slide into disuse of all this, and how readily rust will 

 devour it all, unless you and I, some of us, keep up the supply of educated 

 brains that make its use possible. So we, all of us who can afford it need to be 

 educated for the sake of good to our fellow men. T'he broad principle of phil- 

 anthopy impels us to it, and the laws of social economy enforce it. 



