ELEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART XI 693 



as it was derisively called was furnishing the professional men and 

 women for the state. In northern Illinois the soil was so productive 

 the farmers could not spare the services of son or daughter from the 

 farm. The dollars brought by the corn, the cattle, the hogs, completely 

 obscured the vision of the children's future. They were not given the 

 opportunity of obtaining an education except in rare instances. Are 

 Iowa parents suffering from this same myopia? Does the dollar of today 

 shut out the view of your child's life? Let me urge you to send your 

 children to school even if you have to turn a few cows dry. Send the 

 children to school whether the corn is gathered or not. An education 

 is something which once gotten, no one can take away. A college edu- 

 cation may not be practical for every child. A $1,200 or $2,000 education 

 will make little impress on a ten cent mind, yet the child upon whom 

 a try would be wasted is rare. The mission of education is not alone 

 to prepare great minds for great things, but it is to prepare small minds 

 for greater things than would have been possible otherwise. No parent 

 should let either boy or girl enter life with any less preparation than the 

 best they can give. A few hundred dollars can be risked on the experi- 

 ment. I wish you might witness the transforming power of an education. 



When I was in college there appeared a tow headed, leather skinned 

 boy from the everglades of Florida, uncouth, ungraceful, unattractive, 

 the greenest ever, seemingly hopeless. He was stolid in countenance, 

 slovenly in dress, rude in manner. He entered school, slowly at first, 

 did he move;' his mind seemed stagnant, his speech ungrammatical, his 

 very attitude repelling — all these characteristics changed subtly but 

 unmistakably and in time this poor, hopeless white from the Florida 

 everglades became one of the clearest thinkers, the brainiest students of 

 the class. By degrees his speech conformed to the rules of syntax, his 

 dress to the demands of polite society, and his manner to the custom 

 of true politeness. He graduated and went to Yale for a post graduate 

 course. Here his ability was soon recognized and today he is a member 

 of Yale faculty and is yet under thirty. Such is the transformation of 

 a mental awakening. Of course, measured by dollars, his professor- 

 ship at Yale is not as valuable as your Iowa farm, but money cannot esti- 

 mate the value of his service to humanity as between what it is now 

 and what it would have been without his education. Give your boys and 

 girls a try out. Give them the grind-stone of college advantages to see 

 what brains they have and how they may be sharpened. 



Americans are proud of their patriotism. The patriot desires the nation 

 of which he is a part to become the strongest nation in the world. The 

 strength of a nation lies in its homes. The national standard of integ- 

 rity, of morality and statesmanship generates from the homes. The 

 men who directly guide, guard and uphold the nation — its statesmen, 

 its soldiers, its citizens — come out of those homes and are a power for 

 good or evil according to the mental, moral and physical health of the 

 mothers who bore them and the atmosphere of the homes in which they 

 were reared. The world needs the best and wants the best. The 

 coming years will have greater importunities and the coming woman 



