102 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



We now have the appropriation, and we are doing the best we 

 can to work it out. The spirit of the old universities — Yale, Harv- 

 ard, Princeton, Amherst, in my judgment, is dead. I will tell you 

 why I think so. A large number of students are simply there 

 spending the money which their fathers and grandfathers, and 

 their ancestors earned. Out here, it seems to me, that just exactly 

 the reverse is true. We have a class of producers, the farmers' 

 boys, who are producing something; and the producer is always a 

 more hopeful, energetic citizen than the mere spender. Let me 

 just say a word to some of the old men who have boys. It may be 

 that you in your youth did not have the opportunity to go to col- 

 lege to get an education, which you may now see would have been 

 of great benefit and help to you^ and some of you no doubt would 

 say, that if you had your life to live over again, you would do the 

 best you could, you would deny yourselves many things and fight 

 for an education. Now, gentlemen, if you have boys at home grow- 

 ing up, who at some time in the future will take your place, try 

 and give them a useful and practical education; try and do it; 

 try and put them somewhere where you are sure of them, and 

 where their character is kept clean, pure and true. I believe you 

 have a school right up here at Ames, where I would like to send 

 my boys. The only trouble is, if I send them out here, in this rich 

 country, when they came back to the stony hills, I couldn't keep 

 them there. But there is that one thing, — sentiment. If it hadn't 

 been for that sentiment, ' ' There is no place like home, " if it hadn 't 

 been for that, the people would have pulled up stakes and come 

 here. That love of home, which holds a man away up in Canada 

 among the snows, and away down in the south — no place like 

 home. The trouble with the Yankee was, he wanted to hang on to 

 that dollar too tight. He couldn't realize that half a dollar invested 

 in a boy was a good proposition. Booker T. Washington told me a 

 story of a boy who was caught stealing chickens — to save his life, 

 the boy couldn't help stealing. Finally his master said to him: 

 "If you steal another chicken I am going to take you up in front 

 of the big house, tie you to a tree, and I am going to ring the bell 

 and get all to see you, and the overseer is going to lash you, if you 

 steal another chicken." He went along for three weeks. One 

 Sunday night he heard a rooster crow; the temptation was too 

 strong, and he went in and got the bird. He took it home, and 

 dressed it and was in the act of eating it when the master came in 

 upon him, and there was John eating it. The master started to 

 carry out his threats, so he rang the bell, they built a great 



