AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 4.79 



and he will apply them for himself. Give a man a place to stand, and 

 he will move the world. Facts are trivial as facts. They do not open 

 the eyes of the blind, nor kindle the soul with enthusiasm. We are 

 slaves to facts. Wake a man up. Shake out localisms and prejudices. 

 Insiiire him. Set him at work. Send him on his mission with joy. 



I would not make a man a farmer. W^e have too many perfunctory 

 farmers now. But I would take a man from the farm and educate him. 

 The man must follow his genius. Time will sift and settle the vocations 

 of men. I would love to educate my man in an agricultural college for 

 thereby I should hope that he would develop a sympathetic attitude 

 towards agriculture. We count with pride the graduates of our agricul- 

 tural colleges who are farmers. I am thankful, also, for those who are 

 not I Men are more than farmers I 



Will the farmer educate himself? He must! Those who will not, will 

 drop behind in the conflict. Not every farmer's boy is made of stuff 

 that fits him to grasp a liberal education. Perhaps ten per cent is all 

 that we can hope to reach now. We do not make rails from pepperidge 

 or basswood! 



We can hope something from the present farmers, but much more 

 from the coming generation. We must begin with the children, where 

 ideas are plastic, and prejudices are unformed, and then open the little 

 minds to nature and to truth. We cannot teach agriculture in the pri- 

 mary schools any more than we can teach law or medicine; but we can 

 teach the cliild to see and to infer. He can understand a. flower, he can 

 see the bee as it sips the nectar and then hums away, full of the riotous 

 joy of living; he can know why the farmer rolls his wheat (which is more 

 than the farmer knows), he can see the flight of the bird and catch a 

 song which will lie in his memory forever. 



The rennaisance of agriculture cannot come in a. day. From Adam 

 until the past generation, there has not been a school to teach agriculture. 

 Untaught for centuries, can the farmer work a revolution in a lifetime? 

 If he will not come to us, we must go to him. Our work is a mission; 

 and like all missions, its success is measured by the wisdom and the 

 svmpathv of the missionarv. F>v itinerarv schools, readable bulletins 

 and books, correspondence instruction, personal help, we can reach half 

 the farmers, and this half will fertilize the other. I can see the new day 

 coming in this grand old State, where, one day, there will be a host like 

 an empire. I can hear the refrain from the old hills of New York, where, 

 within a six-month, there have been reached for the betterment of agri- 

 culture 1,000 young farmers, 10,000 teachers and 25,000 children! 



We need not farmers so much as we need men. Educate liberally all 

 men and women who are fitted to receive, and educate nature-ward all 

 those who live in the country or who have rural tastes. Teach that all 

 men. whntpver their vocjition. are what their intellectual and moral 

 stature make them to be. Teach that our civilization is a self-supporting 

 organism in which every trnde and profession lives because it is needed 

 and because it deserves to live. Then I have no fear for agriculture. 



