LAKE ODESSA INSTITUTE. 371 



Question: How interest farmers in agricultural fairs? 



Mr. Stowell : Establish a grange in each town. 



Mr. Wachs : By paying all our own expenses and giving all the premium 

 money to some outsider for a fast horse. 



Mr. English : By suppressing all side shows and making it a purely agri- 

 cultural fair. 



Mr. Johnson : We had better all unite heartily with the Ionia fair. 



Question : Is the interstate commerce bill beneficial? 



Prest. Willits : It depends on where you live. If near a strong competing 

 point, no. If not, yes. The object of the law is to prevent discrimination. 

 To prevent charging more for a short than for a long haul. All the people 

 west of Chicago fought the bill, because without it they were able to get as 

 good prices as you in Michigan, in spite of their being 600 miles farther 

 away. Again, the law says they shall not charge one person more in order 

 to deadhead another. 



Question : Is it fair to tax mortgages? 



Prest. Willits : Yes. The only trouble is to make the tax stick on the 

 holder of the mortgage. 



Question: What is the cost to graduate at Agricultural College? 



Prest. Willits: About $109 per year pays College bills, including board, 

 and $150 to 8200 will cover everything. We make nothing out of them. 



Question : Can we send our daughters there? 



Prest. Willits : We have a few, but we have no accommodations for them. 

 We would not modify our course for them, as I think the education that is 

 good for the boys is good for the girls. 



Question: What is the effect on the mental powers of the manual labor? 



Prest. Willits: I will take 100 Agricultural College boys, 100 Normal 

 School boys and 100 University boys, and the Agricultural College boys will 

 hold their own with the others. The College boys have good appetite, good 

 blood, and good power of study. The students elsewhere try to gain this 

 result by gymnastics and do themselves more harm than good by the irregular 

 character of the exercise. 



Mr. Johnson : I had a friend who went there as a student who wrote me 

 that he studied in the forenoon and worked in the afternoon, and it occurred 

 to me that this work would cure the ills of students — indigestion, nervous 

 prostration, etc. i 



Prest. Willits: Just so. 



Question: How destroy wire worm? 



Mr. French: Prof. Cook recommends trying a buckwheat crop. 



Mr. A. B. Johnson : I had a piece where three crops had been destroyed 

 by wire worms, and I plowed it once the day before a very cold night and 

 had no more trouble, I think they froze. 



Mr. Stowell : They have troubled me, but by manuring corn I got ahead 

 of them. 



Mr. Hosford : I have exterminated them from an orchard by turning over 

 in the spring and sowing to buckwheat and repeating the same the next year 

 and it finished the job. They can't live on buckwheat and that kills out 

 everything else. 



Question: Why don't you pay more than eight cents for student labor? 



Prof. Johnson : The Board of Agriculture have judged that to be all it 

 was worth. 



