Fanners' WeeU in Agricultural College. 85 



choose. Tliiis they are training their minds, and their bodies, their 

 souls, and making them useful in solving the social problems in their 

 respective communities. 



Then, there are other questions in connection with the rural home. 

 One is the supplying of light and power. It has been said for several 

 years that Edison was developing a new storage battery for electricity, 

 but he has not brought it out. I believe that a farmer boy will yet 

 develop a storage battery that can be used on the farm, because the 

 farmer boy knows about the farm,^ and he is going to be educated along 

 the line of electrical engineering and turn his attention to the needs of 

 the farm. He will learn how to get powder on it and take away the 

 drudgery. Before many more years are gone by, I believe that the 

 farmer boy will be able to harness the wind and furnish the power for 

 the farm without much expense. The time is coming when less and 

 less of hard manual labor will be required to accomplish the work of 

 the farm, and it will be through the use of the brains of the farmer 

 boys whom we are educating in our agricultural schools and colleges. 

 There are many problems on the farm that I have not time to mention, 

 but I w^ould like to say this: Educate these boys and girls as well as 

 they can be educated; prepare them for the greatest possible usefulness 

 and helpfulness to their fellow men, that is the highest ideal of a true 

 education. When we have done this we have made them of ]nore con- 

 sequence in the world, we have made their lives happier, we have made 

 them capable of far more helpfulness to everyone with whom they have 

 relations, we have made the home, the farm, the State and the United 

 States better, and on this basis of good citizenship we will develop the 

 greatest nation here that has ever been upon the face of the earth. I 

 believe that in this work of making a stable government, of making 

 happy homes, of making good farms, the new agricultural education is 

 to play the greatest part. I believe that our State Agricultural Colleges 

 will play a part, and that it is second to none in elevating the farmers 

 and the farmers' boys and girls, in making the home happier, the State 

 stronger, in giving to every farm home the good things of the city as 

 well as of the countrv^ and in making the farm life ideal. I can look 

 back twelve or twenty years to the time when it seemed as though 

 everybody was going away from the farm to the city. Now they are 

 going from the city to the farm. "We have the best calling on earth. 

 "When we make attractive plans for our farm life with a will to make 

 good if we can, and when, instead of robbing our soil we conserve its 

 fertility, and hand down to our children our farms in better condition 

 than when we took them, then we have helped lay a foundation for good 

 agriculture that is better than any foundation it has had in the past. 



