FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 83 



the agricultural colleges cannot directly reach the masses. The masses 

 have known this for a long time. The educators either have not known 

 it or have not admitted it. To admit it would seem to admit a weak- 

 ness, and the agricultural colleges were not sufficiently entrenched in 

 popular estimation to make such admission safe. But it is not an evi- 

 dence of weakness, but of strength. The colleges can do the best work 

 for higher education when they are somewhat removed from the masses. 

 We should supplement them by primary and secondary education. 

 Nature-study may be expected, if properly carried out, to supply the 

 I)rimary education. Agricultural high schools, and agriculture in high 

 schools, should supply the secondary. Of agricultural high schools we 

 have little experience in this country. The successful effort in Minne- 

 sota is our best example. 



I close my remarks as I began, by saying that the only fundamental 

 help for farming is to make better farmers, and we make better farmers 

 by making better and wiser men. Wiser men will not only surmount 

 their individual and local difficulties, but they will make themselves felt 

 in removing the transient political and economic ills which are amenable 

 to legislation. There are always some among us who believe that politi- 

 cal ills are responsible for most of the unfortunate predicaments of 

 agriculture. Apostle of this faith was John Taylor, of Caroline county, 

 Virginia, who wrote the famous ^'Arator" early in this century, lam- 

 pooning Alexander Hamilton with the right hand and discoursing on 

 practical agriculture with the left. The tariff is with us, as it was with 

 Taylor; but it is not ordained of nature to be always present. And if 

 it is an ill, and therefore to be overthrown, it must be destroyed by 

 the onslaughts of educated men, and an awakened agricultural senti- 

 ment. Permanent evolution comes slowly. All the old agitation for 

 agricultural education was not fruitless; it set ideas in motion. Most 

 of the early movements were through societies. Finally the time came 

 when the State must foster education as a matter of self-preservation. 

 Three great educational principles have grown out of the agitations of 

 all these centuries. Remember them: the common people should be 

 educated; the State should support education; education should have 

 some relation to the dailv vocation and living. 



