1907.] ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT HADLEY, 25 



be taken into account quick. So much for work that the farm 

 does in the education of producers in furnishing a basis for 

 resourcefulness that is going to tell in unexpected emergencies 

 in life, and, by the way, the emergencies are always unexpected 

 in the main. Let me tell you by way of illustration of my point 

 what was said to me by a captain of experience on one of the 

 greatest transatlantic lines. He said, " Our company states " 

 — and in this respect that company was only following what 

 is true, to a large measure, at a large naval school like Annapo- 

 lis — " our company still believes that the preliminary training 

 of officers for steamships should be in sailing ships. They 

 do not get the specialized knowledge of machinery, but they 

 can get that afterward ; and they do not get any certain readi- 

 ness with some of the complicated instruments in use on the 

 transatlantic liners, but they can get that afterwards. What 

 they do get in the old-fashioned sailing ship training is the 

 habit of meeting with promptitude and judgment any sort of 

 an unexpected emergency. The boy who is trained on a 

 machine is all right if the machine goes right. If the machine 

 goes wrong he may fail to meet an emergency that will make 

 the difference between safety and destruction." And so I say 

 here with regard to farm education and education in resource- 

 fulness that comes in the' home, the boy who is trained along 

 that line will work all right as long as the machine works in 

 the way that he expects. The boy who is trained on the farm 

 is trained to take his chance of anything that comes up. 



But there is another aspect of country life and country 

 training, if we would make it what it should be, another educa- 

 tional aspect which, in my judgment, is even more important 

 than technical service rendered, that is, the training which it 

 gives in the work of citizenship. Those who observed care- 

 fully the course of our Civil War noted that while patriotism 

 was confined to no class and no section, the bulk of the hard 

 fighting was nevertheless done by the country boys. There 

 were some good regiments from the cities and some bad ones. 



