168 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



constitute the citizenship of today. It has always surpassed my compre- 

 hension why it was right to spend pubHc money on the education of people 

 assembled in a school and yet it should be wrong to spend public money 

 on the education of people, so far as it could be accomplished, at their 

 homes. I believe as firmly as I believe that I am standing here that 

 sooner or later the people of this country are going to come to this conclu- 

 sion that it is the function of the State to educate its people as well as its 

 function to rule them, and that no limit can be placed upon the process of 

 education, so long as it is effectual ; that it must be given to the people ir- 

 respective of age and irrespective of residence and I think that we 

 are coming to the doctrine that the Government owes this to the 

 people because of the preciousness of the individual soul. Our 

 forefathers reasoned that the state ought to educate for the pres- 

 ervation of the state, but we are going to reach the doctrine, soon- 

 er or later that the state must educate because of the preciousness- 

 of the individual soul, and that no limit of age can be placed upon the pro- 

 cess, but those who can be assembled together shall be educated in masses, 

 because the process is the most effectual in that way, but that those who 

 through circumstances are debarred from attending schools and institu- 

 tions of higher learning shall receive at their homes such instruction as 

 the state can give in that handicrL*rt, instruction through traveling lectur- 

 ers, traveling libraaries, traveling galleries and instruction through pub- 

 lications. What is the State ^i Missouri doing now ? Does not the State 

 hold a large number of institutes every year conducted by the State 

 Board of Agriculture? Does it not sustain a secretary of that Board on 

 a salary, and what is the purpose of these institutes except to go around 

 among the people and give them such information and education as can 

 be carried to them in the neighborhood of their homes ? What does' the 

 Federal Government do except to give our Station at Columbia the frank- 

 ing privilege in order that, without paying one single cent for postage 

 we may scatter thousands and hundreds of thousands of documents among 

 the farmers of the state respecting agriculture, documents that they should 

 read at their homes? Our publications from the College of Agriculture 

 do not fall short of two hundred thousand documents per annum, and 

 every single one is sent out under the frank of the Government, without 

 the payment of a single cent of postage and the Government smiles blandly 

 every time we send them out. If that can be done for agriculture, why 

 may it not be done in every other line of work and Mr. Hatch has ad- 

 vanced the doctrine that it is the function of the State and Government 

 to educate as well as control and that you cannot limit it to children but 

 must extend it to grown people as well ; that you cannot limit it to those 

 who congregate in institutions of learning, though that is the best way to 



