72 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



the highest award of all the states and countries for the best sj'stem of 

 common schools. This, as I remember, came from a commission sent out 

 by the government of Australia to make inquiry of all the different 

 systems and to adopt that which they considered best. This diploma or 

 award should be framed in gold and allowed to hang conspicuously on 

 the walls of the capitol of our State as an honor to the fathers who had 

 the foresight to anticipate a system which would be in keeping with the 

 progressive demands of future generations. 



To all people here assembled, let us take pride in our great State and 

 all of its institutions. Let us be liberal, 3'et just. As farmers let us take 

 pride in our profession and business, and let us through our organizations 

 strive to make the farmer's home the happiest, best and most attractive 

 spot on earth. 



THE CHURCH AS A CENTER OF RURAL ORGANIZATION. 



GRAHAM TAYLOR,, CHICAGO COMMONS. 



In his "Social Evolution" Benjamin Kidd tries to show us what our 

 body politic really is or ought to be, through the eyes of a visitant from 

 another sphere. This inquisitive other-world stranger obtains from a man 

 of the earth a fair idea of what the farm and factory, the town and court 

 house are for, but his anti-ecclesiastical guide fails utterly to make him 

 understand what part the churches have in the community, life and work, 

 or what reason for existence they really have. Indeed, the visitor is assured 

 that they are nothing more than barnacles on the bottom of the ship of 

 state, the accretions from the slimier waters through which progress has 

 been taken. Nevertheless his visitor cannot see why they exist everywhere, 

 why the people support them and gather around them, and why they so 

 persistently survive all the other effete and discarded things, if they have 

 lost all usefulness, or never had any. Thus the author tries to awaken 

 us to inquire what our social institutions are for, and especially what 

 functions the churches have in the community, which not only their sup- 

 porters, but the people at large may justly require them to fulfil. 



To raise such a question emphasizes the fatal facility with which men 

 forget the purpose of established institutions and their reason for exist- 

 ence, thus losing the value and even the sight of their ends in forgetting 

 that they are means. This institutionalism which substitutes means for 

 ends, and subverts the ends in slavishly serving the means, is the very 

 insanity of history, political, industrial, educational and ecclesiastical. 

 Thus the state, the municipality and the town lose their hold on life and 

 the loyalty of the people by becoming partisan machines instead of public 

 service utilities. Thus commercialism overreaches itself in sacrificing 

 the many to the few, and prevents a gainful cooperation in order to pro- 

 mote a destructively unrestricted competition. Thus the schools and 

 universities, by making knowledge an end instead of a means and apothe- 

 osizing culture for culture's sake, fail in their mission, which, as well 

 defined here vesterdav, is not onlv "to minister to industrial advance- 



