New York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. FI 
through these years, honorable, careful work, in order that one of 
the great and important activities of our State should be further 
advanced. Oh, it is a noble thought to think of the men whose 
names are not heralded abroad, whose acts do not furnish headlines 
for the newspapers, but who in their different fields of activity are 
making this the Empire State, so all honor to the twenty-five years 
of honorable and careful effort at Geneva. (Applause.) 
FARMER NOT OBJECT OF CHARITY. 
“ Now I do not believe that the farmer regards himself an object 
for State charity. (Applause.) So far as I have observed the 
farmer is a pretty independent citizen. He generally has a mind 
of his own. In fact I do not know what our fund of intelligence 
and rationalism would amount to if we did not draw upon the 
farmers for a continual renewal of the supply. (Applause. ) 
“When you get out where a man has a little elbow room and a 
chance to develop, he has thoughts of his own. His thinking is 
not supplied to him every night and every morning and he is less 
of a machine and more of a man, so that I do not think that the 
farmers need to be looked upon or want to be looked upon as de- 
pendents of the State. They do not come to the State government 
asking alms; they are self-reliant, they are intelligent. What we 
want in connection with agriculture is what we want in connection 
with every other field of noble effort; we want training, we want 
intelligence, we want scientific method, we want direction, we want 
the way shown and then the man in a way can walk in it. (Ap- 
plause.) There is no reason why the same care and attention and 
skill and scientific consideration should not be devoted to agriculture 
as to industry and the technical trades. The men who are running 
away from the farms too frequently make a mistake; and some day 
in New York,— and the day is rapidly approaching — many a young 
man will wake up to the fact that he has a pretty good chance on the 
farm and that he may be more of a man and to a greater degree 
independent and happy in life, if he stays where his happy lot was 
cast in connection with his father’s farm or another which he may 
be able to procure. 
“Dr. Jordan has said that there is not much popularity in scien- 
tific method, or with relation to the scientific method. Well, of 
course, they do not go around, so far as the scientific method is 
concerned, with quite the same parade that attaches to some other 
activities, but I tell you if your test of popularity is what people 
