442 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE 



recoj;uizing and of tonspicuoiisly bcarinp; witness to a jiivat truth which 

 the worhl is coniinji. tlioii^h slowl.v. to accept. W'liatcvcr peo])h' may 

 think of a taiilf, or the want of a laiili'. of one llicory of the cnn-ency oi' of 

 auotlier theory of llie currency, as factors in cicv( lopinj; a nation's indus- 

 tries, it is certain that technical sch(M)l instruction is needed foi- that 

 industrial evolution which marks our age. In Gernniny, the remarkable 

 lii'owlh of manufacturing iiidiisti'ics is attriluit(Ml chiclly to tln^ skilled 

 labor taujiiit in industrial schools. -V leading Trade Keview of that coun- 

 try says in a recent article: 



"It has been jKunted out by Lord Koseberry to Englishmen and by 

 iseveial advanced thinkers in the t^nitcd State's to Americans, that one of 

 the causes of (Jermany's success in industrial welfare is the superiority of 

 her system of technical education. Her technical schools will be found in 

 and about every industrial center, and wherever thev are found it will be 

 admitted that they have so largely increased the efficiency of the work 

 people that equal results could not have been obtained without them. 

 The technical schools are supi)orted by the State, and they jirovide the 

 means for all who wish to become expert workmen." 



^^'e thus see that the world is coming to recognize the value of edu- 

 cated labor and of scientific appliances to the mechanical arts as well as 

 to agriculture. 



MARVELOUS INCREASE OF WEALTH. 



This recognition, however, has been of slow growth. The new eia of 

 industrial and wealth producing energy and the consecjuent elevation of 

 labor, and of the arts which labor subjects to its service, belong to the last 

 half of the present century. No statistician or economist, in noting the 

 wonderful increase of wealth, or the expansion of industry which mark 

 our time, goes back beyond the year 1850. Only the last four reports of 

 the decennial census of our own country are used as the waymarks of this 

 rapid advance which seems destined to soon reach a plane of civilization, 

 of which our fathers only dreamed ;is possible, in a very distant futui-e. 

 Mr. ^lulliall, perhaps the world's greatest living statistician, shows in a 

 ]iaper just given to the ]>ublic that the average wealth of each person in 

 the middle States of the T^nion, has almost quadrupled in the last foi-ty 

 years, whereas it has been considered by economical ex}>erts that a nation 

 must be phenomenally prosperous, in order to merely double its wealth in 

 that period. He also shows as the result of his comparison of the census 

 tables, that the scale of wages for manufacturing operatives in those 

 States, has been raised 115 ])er cent; an<l Michigan would undoubtedly 

 exhibit a similar increase. Labor has acquired an immense increment to 

 its share in the profits of industrial investments, during the period under 

 review. 



AGRICULTURE THE LEADING INDUSTRY. 



But this college, in its very name, assumes to provide the opportunity 

 for acquiring a thorough agricultural education, and so to be an efficient 

 means of promoting agricultural industiy. It accepts agriculture as the 

 mother of all the arts, and art is a word derived from a root which in the 

 primitive language of our race, signifies, "to plow.'' The old Romans, 

 an intensely practical ])eople, saw that agriculture was the basis of all 

 national i)rosperity, and when ari ancient Italian city was founded, the 



