Live Stock Breeders' Association. 267 



While you know Missouri as a great agricultural State, yet under 

 the power of the intellectual development that a completed rural 

 educational system will give, an agricultural Missouri undreamed 

 of will evolve. On this fabric a mighty State will rise. Emerson 

 said, "In the order of events intellect is primary and nature sec- 

 ondary." Intellect is the sovereign force of the universe, its creator 

 and controller. Whether we are a spark of the divine intelligence 

 or a separate creation, we, too, are masters, not only of the matter 

 of our globe, but of the natural forces that are associated with it. 

 Just in ratio, as we acquaint ourselves with and master those 

 forces do we increase our productive powers. Somebody has said : 

 "The course of nature is the art of God;" in other words, nature 

 is endowed with laws. As farming, as no other industry, has to 

 do with the laws of nature, so the farmer, of all men, should be 

 most familiar with these laws. This means that he should master 

 the natural and applied sciences as no other industrialist must. As 

 the farmer is an executive in the handling of labor, of mercantile 

 experience as a buyer and seller, a man of fine physical develop- 

 ment from an out-of-door life occupied, as he is in varied work that 

 applies all the muscles of the body ; dealing with both art and with 

 subtle, inter-related laws, he becomes a keen observer, and is a 

 home owner and natural friend of stable society, a moral man 

 and the balance wheel of the State. So it follows that the farmer 

 to be is the man described by McCaulay as "the man of parts," and 

 the measure of the world's progress as never before. 



The farmers of Missouri must stand for a complete agricul- 

 tural educational system, if they would stand for their highest 

 good and for the highest good of the State. The progress of agri- 

 culture has been the measure of the progress of the State in its 

 arts, literature, culture and wealth. Mind is the measure of the 

 output of land as it is of the arts ; hence the State is pre-eminently 

 interested in the intellectual development of its agriculturists. Are 

 these mere pleasing, self-complaisant sentiments, or are corroborat- 

 ing facts to be found ? 



While teaching agriculture over there in a little building, now 

 in the midst of a sea of fine, large buildings, I hunted out the 

 statistical crop returns of every state in the Union and of the 

 nations of Europe, and found that the per cent, of literary of a 

 people was the measure of the productiveness of the soil. Missouri, 

 as I recall, had at that time about 87 per cent, of her people able 

 to read and write to about 94 to 93 per cent, in Illinois and Kansas. 

 The crops stood in this ratio. So it was between other states and 



