COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 415 



Thus far we have chiefly considered the benefit of the agricultural 

 college to the individual farmer who is fortunate enough to become one 

 of its students, but its benefits are much farther-reaching and apply to 

 the whole commonwealth. 



It was truly said a long time ago that "he who makes two blades of 

 grass grow where one grew before is a public benefactor," Not merely 

 a benefactor to himself, but to the whole community, a public benefactor. 

 Take a bright boy from one of the poorer farms of the State, furnish 

 him a couple of hundred dollars to help pay his way through the college. 

 The college gives him an education. He goes back to the farm and begins 

 to improve it. Studying the course of the markets and the capabilities 

 of the farm, he learns what to grow and what not to grow. He applies 

 the kinds of fertilizers best adapted to his land, changes the breed of 

 stock, builds a silo, i)lants the best varieties of fruit trees, raises some 

 shrubbery and flowers for the Detroit market. In twenty years or so 

 he has amassed a moderate fortune, builds a fine house, furnishes it 

 with a library, musical instruments and j)ictures, and lives as a wealthy 

 country gentleman should. He attributes the foundation of his success 

 to the education he received at the college. But has he only been th^ 

 gainer from his education. He has made two blades of grass grow where 

 one grew before; he has been a public benefactor whether he desired 

 to be one or not. Not a dollar of his Avealth has been made except by 

 the increased value of the products of the soil, and his becoming richer 

 has made no man poorer. He has furnished the people of the city with 

 the finer produce of his farm at good prices, which they were willing to 

 pay. He has hired more workmen on his farm, and has been compelled 

 through the general prosperity of the country to advance their wages. 

 When he builds new barns or a new house, buys improved machinery, 

 wears better clothes, drives in a better carriage, he has to give employ- 

 ment to more high-priced workmen. He pays more taxes, gives more 

 work to the railroads. Every dollar of profit he makes he must do some- 

 thing with, and whether he spends it to improve his property or puts 

 it in the savings bank where it will be loaned to do useful work for 

 someone else, he improves the financial condition of the community. 

 But more than this, every improvement he has made in his farm or in his 

 farming methods has been made under the eyes of all his neighbors. He 

 cannot keep a farming secret if he tried. They profit by his example, 

 and as far as they are able improve their farms and their methods also. 

 If the whole farming community becomes rich it furnishes a valuable 

 market to the manufacturers, who thus share in the farmers' prosperity. 

 Kich farmers, who have made their riches by cultivation of the soil, are 

 good citizens, and the more such citizens the country has the better. 

 In so far as the college can assist in making of a farmer's boy a. broad- 

 minded, intelligent, well educated citizen, in so far as it can teach him 

 how to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before, it per- 

 forms a work which is of vastly more importance to the commonwealth 

 than it is to the individual student. The college is the great public 

 benefactor in that it turns out men fitted to become public benefactors. 



The foregoing remarks have had relation chiefly to the importance 

 of the Agricultural College to the welfare of the State, but much of what 

 has been said might be repeated in regard to the value of technical 

 schools of other kinds than agricultural. This College has established 



