274 STATE BOAED OF AGEICULTUEE. 



doctors find it out until too late to profit by the knowledge), that no one looking 

 forward to a profession can afford to neglect preliminary culture any more than 

 he can afford to forego the special course of study. Though without it he may 

 enter the bar or the practice earlier, at thirty-five he will have been outstripped 

 by those who began later, but with better preparation. 



But, you say, all cannot be professional men if they would ; there must always 

 be a grand majority to make work for the professionals. Can the rest of us 

 afford to invest in education? I believe most certainly we can. 



Taking first the class of laboring men called artizans, we cannot but feel sure 

 that he who fits himself by scientific training to scientific thought, Avhile he does 

 not forget the details of his trade, will accomplish most and get the most pay. 

 Every one knows that the work of so called operatives is at all effective, only as 

 some better educated head is able to direct it for them. A careful estimate 

 places the waste, even now, from ignorance and thoughtlessness at not less than 

 one-fifth of our time, and some place it higher still. President Chadbourne of 

 Williams College says : "It is safe to say that more than one-third of the time 

 and strength of all who labor is spent in vain." Now, education cannot be 

 expected to save all of this waste, but a very little saved yearly would soon com- 

 pensate for all the cost, and pay its compound annuity through life. If it 

 shortens apprenticeship, as we know it does, it saves the immense waste of ma- 

 terial by which each rude hand becomes a finished workman. 



I know that many practical men express a doubt of the availability of educa- 

 tion for business purposes ; but yet very few of the successful ones who have 

 sons care to forego its advantages for them, and wherever a systematic effort 

 has been made to gather ojDinions of able men in regard to their own business, 

 the advantage of education has been granted, with an estimate that it raises the 

 wages from ten to twenty-five or even fifty per cent. That it has not made a 

 wider reputation for itself may be accounted for by two facts : first, that the call 

 for educated men in the professions has never been fully met, and these seem more 

 attractive fields of labor from being more directly involved in all philanthropic 

 schemes ; second, from the fact that education has sometimes drifted away from 

 the active life of the world, so as to shut out all thought of details and lead to a 

 sort of foppishness in learning, that made it fear to soil its hands with work. 

 This last fact has sometimes been laid to the account of the kind of studies 

 pursued, linking our life more to the ancients than to our own peoples ; but it 

 seems to me quite as much due to the utter separation from the ordinary life 

 of men, made by the old system of college monasticism. The modern plan 

 gives to the student less of a boy's place and more of the man's, and treats him 

 as a responsible being, — holds him amenable to the same laws of good order that 

 outsiders obey, and puts him on a level with his manhood, not in a forced ser- 

 vility that leads to a shirking of all duties. Twenty years from now we shall 

 see the fruit of this in a higher type of business life. 



Now, I do not overlook the fact, that much opportunity for mastering the 

 minutia3 of a trade is lost. Yet an educated man may be ignorant of many 

 things that it Avould be Avell for him to know, and still thrive ; for give him a 

 motive for knowing and his ignorance will vanish, since he knows where to find 

 the knowledge. If, then, we can join to such mental training the associations 

 that bring before us the active business of the world and interest us in them, 

 every business man and every artisan will find a necessary part of his capital in 

 an education. 



If this is true of business affairs and trades, in which the work is, much of it. 



