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tors. The moment we doubled our instructors we doubled our students, and so 

 it will be everywhere. These students Icnow what they want lietter than we do. 



For years we temporized with the matter lieeause we thought if we had few 

 students we only needed a few instructors. It is as much trouble to teach one 

 as a hundred. When I was a student of agriculture there was very little litera- 

 ture and no bulletins. If you had had 20 professors of agriculture twenty years 

 ago there would have been, apparently, a great waste cf money, and yet we 

 would have got along nmch faster if we had I)een able to increase our numbers 

 earlier. I read a report on household science the other day. written by a body 

 of intelligent women, who undertook to say that household science some day 

 would be a great subject in universities, but that no subject could be attempted 

 by a great university until it could go in with all the dignity of any other sub- 

 ject and be as well taught as any other subject, and I said it would never get 

 into the university then. Agriculture \^'Ould never have gotten into any uni- 

 versity or college if it had not begun until it was perfected. I am of the 

 opinion that it is in the universities of to-day that agriculture has the best 

 opportunity, because the theory of the university is that every department in it 

 may offer all the courses that the genius of its men will permit, that the depart- 

 ment may do just as much in the way of expansion and in the way of courses 

 as the money at its command will make possilile. The theory of the college is, 

 on the other hand, that there is a set course, and when the course is full there 

 is no chance for expansion. That is likely to be true of the independent agri- 

 cultural college. As a rule colleges have set courses, and as a rule universities 

 do not. Until agriculture can have in the colleges of agriculture that are dis- 

 tinct from universities the same opportunity for extension or subdivision as 

 there is in universities generally it will be hampered in its development. I 

 believe that every institution, whether a university or college of agriculture, 

 should give the agricultural department every opportunity to divide and sub- 

 divide, and supply it with plenty of men and money. In the agricultural col- 

 leges there must be almost unlimited election in agriculture, because such tech- 

 nical work must be elective Agriculture, in order to prosper, must have almost 

 unlimited means, unlimited numbers of men, and unlimited privileges. 



W. M. IlAYS, of Minnesota. You say you divide the work about half and half. 

 How do you arrange this? 



Mr. Davenport. If a man graduates from our university he takes certain pre- 

 scribed studies. Those are arranged so that half are agriculture and the other 

 half not agriculture. He has about one-fifth of his time to use as he pleases. 

 He can make it a little more than half technical, or he can make it exactly half 

 technical. We distribute the technical from the first year until the last. The 

 student takes some agriculture from the first. Our courses are so arranged that 

 if the student follows our advice he begins agriculture, science, and literature 

 when he enters the university. 



Mr. Baii.ev. There is a point of view which I would like to suggest, which I 

 think marks a wide difference between the practice of the agricultural college 

 of the University of Illinois and some of the other institutions of similar grade, 

 and that is whether some of these courses, looked upon as more directly pro- 

 fessional, are not fitting men for rather narrowly specialized vocations in life, 

 whereas others of us are teaching broad agricultural courses, which are intended 

 to fit a man for the undertaking of the larger affairs of agriculture and of 

 country living. In our own college of agriculture we do not expect to fit a man 

 for the technical work of stock judging, or the technical work of corn breeding, 

 so much as we do to educate the n-.nn and to fit him to be a strong and resource- 

 ful iiian and able to take up any particular kind of work he wishes to later in 

 life. 



