NINTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III 117 
other of the worlds. They don't take up with these new, hair-brained 
ideas and isms; they think it out dispassionately and without reference 
to political parties or creeds. I need not say that they are the most 
independent men on earth; you all know that; and yet it will bear 
repetition. 
Now, if you will just devise some means whereby you can re-establish 
something of this old social life that some of you men ejoyed when you 
were young, — if you can put something in place of the spelling-school 
and debating school for society, and the husking bee and the old log- 
rolling (if any of you are from Indiana you know something about that), 
you have accomplished a great deal for social life upon the farm. 
I might talk to you all day, because on this subject of education I am 
a crank — and yet I don't mean to say that, exactly. A crank, I have 
been told, is a man who sees one thing very clearly, and he is generally 
right about that; but he doesn't see it in its proper relation to other 
things. I think that is a pretty good definition. I believe I see it in 
the proper relation, and so I am going to say that I am an enthusiast on 
this subject of proper education for the boys and girls in Iowa. We 
have all the lawyers we need, and all the doctors that can make a living. 
We have more dentists than there are rotten teeth, and more ministers 
than we can support. But I v/ill tell you that we havn't anything like 
the number of good farmers that we ought to have. And let me tell you 
that if you get your boy started up here at Ames, he will come back 
with different notions. The trouble is to get them up to the point where 
they can go to Ames. Give them a secondary school where they can 
start in and lead to this agricultural college of high-class research work. 
What is the use of maintaining an institution here unless you are going 
to have a feeder for that, just the same as you have for your State 
University? Why direct every boy and girl to this cutural school? Let's 
have some feeders for the State Agricultural College and let them do 
the work which they ought to do. 
The investigation of this great problem of tuberculosis should be 
carried on. I do want to call your attention to one thing. I think it 
is quite 2,500 people in Iowa who die from the "white plague" every 
year. Startling! How many men were killed in the Spanish- American 
war? What is the tendency of modern thought, and what ought it to be 
in every line? It is prevention, isn't it? It is not the cure of disease 
after you get it, but it is to prevent people from getting that disease. 
And if only ten per cent of the people take it from diseased cattle or 
diseased pork, we owe it to humanity that we get rid of that ten per 
cent by means of prevention. Don't say that because this disease is 
gradually growing all the time you will sit idly by and let it grow, and 
try to take care of these people after they get it? That is the trouble 
with us everywhere; we don't go deep enough into these problems. We 
treat them in a surface sort of way. We do as the physicians do to-day; 
treat things symptomatically, not scientifically. I think the farmers 
ought to be interested in this matter to save their stock, but I am plead- 
ing now for a larger view. You ought to be interested, and you must be 
interested in it for the sake of humanity. 
