SEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART IV. 125 



I have looked upon the work which has been going on in this State with 

 Intense interest. I believe that in it lies the leadership of Iowa in the 

 Union, and therefore I am going to suggest it to you for your considera- 

 tion. Not simply to lay aside, not simply as a valueless thing, but because 

 I want you to think upon it, and act upon it. I believe that a large part 

 of this credit for this awakening and this interest in agriculture, the 

 lessons which you have seen in the last few years, the close interest you 

 have seen everywhere throughout the state. I believe the real credit which 

 has been given for this should be given to the Agricultural College at 

 Ames. We have there now, and have had, a band of as faithful and 

 devoted public servants as I have ever known, and without stint so far as 

 their strength was concerned and without measure so far as their enthu- 

 siasm is concerned. They have gone about this commonwealth preaching 

 the gospel of corn. There are very many men in this State who cannot go 

 to Ames; they are too old to enroll as students at Ames. There are a 

 great many men and women in this State who have passed from this 

 period of preparation, but they would like the opportunity to study the 

 fundamental principles of the science of agriculture. There are a good 

 many boys in this State who, however ambitious they may be, however 

 deserving they may be, cannot go, cannot leave home to take the course 

 which is prescribed for students at the agricultural colleges, either at 

 Ames or anywhere else. We are all bound by conditions and sometimes 

 we cannot get away from them, and the number of men and women who 

 can attend the agricultural school at Ames is now and always must be 

 very small; and I believe the time has come in this State when we ought 

 to extend the opportunity to our men and women to study agriculture. 

 I would like to see some plan devised by which gray headed men can, if 

 they have an hour on a rainy day, or after supper at night, whenever 

 they can get it, have an opportunity to sit down with their wives and 

 their children around them, and study the thing which is to make Iowa 

 great and prosperous, if we are to be great and prosperous. Now I come 

 to another step. I do not know whether all of you are aware of it or not, 

 but there has been in this country the last few years a system of educa- 

 tion devised which is new in our age. It began in the Chautauqua. Years 

 ago some good men and women conceived the plan of instituting a Chau- 

 tauqua. Now I don't mean these Chautauquas which we see generally 

 throughout the State, where any man, and some who can't, get up and talk 

 for two hundred dollars per day. I mean the Chautauqua which planned 

 a system of instruction for those who could not go to school. Out of that 

 Chautauqua experiment there has been organized in this country a system 

 of correspondence schools that are simply wonderful. They do not make 

 the highest scholars; there is no opportunity for complete, and therefore 

 no thorough education, but I have had an opportunity to investigate it 

 myself. There is one school down at Scranton, Pennsylvania, that has ten 

 thousand pupils in the State of Iowa. Ten thousand of our boys and girls 

 and men and women are now taking instruction in the various branches 

 of learning from the Scranton Correspondence School. There is another 

 at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and there is another at Sioux City, and they are 

 scattered all over the land. Now these, while I have no doubt there is 



