MISCEIiANEOUS. 445 



every volume in the common school library in his school district before 

 the age of i6, and carrying on his other studies in his thoroughly charac- 

 teristic manner. He worked his way through school by teaching in win- 

 ter and attending the seminaries in the vicinity in summer, until twenty 

 years of age, when his ambition to identify himself with the growing 

 west influenced him to remove to Kentucky, Here he taught school in 

 Louisville, and thus provided himself with means to attend the Louis- 

 ville Law University, where he took the degree of Bachelor of Law, and 

 later was licensed as an attorney. He practiced law at New Albany, 

 Indiana, and was elected district attorney. In 1852 young Colman re- 

 moved to St. Louis, continuing in the successful practice of his profes- 

 sion. His love for rural pursuits soon induced him to purchase a coun- 

 try home, and establish an agricultural journal, known as Colman's Rural 

 World, now of national reputation as an influential exponent of the best 

 methods in all that pertains to advanced agriculture. 



He soon became a prominent leader and advocate of agricultural 

 progress in the Mississippi valley. He was called upon to take an active 

 part in every movement in behalf of the interests of the farmer, and soon 

 became generally known as a forceful and eloquent advocate of better 

 methods in farming and of State and National legislation needed to give 

 the producer the full return for his labors. 



His loyalty to his constituency and his unswerving devotion to the 

 fanners' interest prompted the agricultural classes to secure him the fol- 

 lowing well-merited honors, viz. : A member of the Missouri Legisla- 

 ture, Lieutenant-Governor of his State, President of the Missouri State 

 Horticultural Society, President of the Missouri State Board of Agri- 

 culture, trustee for fifteen years of the Missouri State University, Presi- 

 dent of the Missouri State Press Association for two terms. United States 

 Commissioner of Agriculture, and when the United States Department 

 of Agriculture was created, he was made the first secretary. 



But few persons appreciate the magnitude of the work accomplished 

 by Mr. Colman in behalf of our agricultural interests. It was more 

 than a score of years ago that he took his seat as United States Commis- 

 sioner of Agriculture, under the appointment of President Grover Cleve- 

 land. At that time the standing of the department was at a low ebb. 

 It was the butt of ridicule of the Washington correspondents of the pub- 

 lic press. The great interests it represented had no voice in the Presi- 

 dent's cabinet. Not a single government experiment station existed in 

 connection with an agricultural college or university in the United States. 

 Many of the most important and useful divisions now existing in the de- 

 partment had never been thought of, or at least established. At that 

 time, also, that terrible and incurable disease of contagious pleuro pneu- 



