THE NEW HORTICULTURAL BUILDING. 253 



type of man could till the fields and from them not only feed and 

 clothe himself, but provide the bread for millions and furnish the 

 " sinews of war " to the ambitious potentates of all the past, does not 

 argue the essential meanness of the art but rather the bountiful 

 kindness of the ground he tilled. Give that man the force of 

 thought, the energy of hope, the joy of progress, and he will rise 

 and take his place with us, and the products of his fields and herds 

 will be the wonder of the world and, my friends, it is to further 

 such a work, to bring about so beneficent an end, that we are met 

 today. 



Let us not minimize its importance, or fail to grasp the full mean- 

 ing and glory of modern agricultural education. It is the bright 

 particular flower of Christian civilization. The great teacher came 

 not to the righteous, but to sinners, not to the rich and surfeited, 

 but to the needy. Agricultural education does not come to such as 

 the overburdened professions, upon which time has alwaj's lavished 

 knowledge, nor does it say to the cultured: "Lo, a higher cult!" 

 It comes to the man neglected by the past, the name of his occupa- 

 tion almost a synonym of contempt and says with truth: 



"I will straiKhten up this shape, 

 Give back the upward looking and the light. 

 Rebuild in it the music and the dream. 

 Make right the immemorial infamies." 



American agriculture has much before it of bright and'immediate 

 promise. Enlarged markets, which are surely coming with the 

 enlarged influence of the nation, will make new demands upon our 

 fields and flocks and stimulate new factories that use their products. 

 The emigration which will seek our shores, to share in our prosperity, 

 will bring us many more mouths to feed at home. New and better 

 applications of force, and new forces that are upon the eve of over- 

 turning and transforming all the engines of commerce and cheap- 

 ening transportation to a most wonderful degree, will bring the 

 great markets of the world thousands of miles nearer to us and 

 place our products before millions who have never enjoyed them 

 before. 



All this is sure to come, but it is not so certain that we as agricul- 

 turists will gain all the benefits that such opportunities should 

 carry with them. That will depend upon our ability to measure up 

 to the new demands upon us. The same cheap transportation 

 which may carry our products, will carry the products of other 

 nations, and our success will call aloud for better products, which 

 calls for better methods, which calls for better men, and what but 

 better education can give us better men? 



What wonderful strides agricultural education has made these 

 later years. There has been nothing like it in educational history, 

 that we can remember. When I entered this very university as a 

 student, some twenty-five years ago, there was no agricultural de- 

 partment organized, nor was there, in all the other colleges and 

 schools, a place where practical agriculture was taught. The first 

 great question that comes to every student when once the college 

 doors are open to him, "What course shall I pursue?" was answered 

 uniforml)': "Lay a broad foundation, take the classical." It may 

 have been the best advice that could have been given at that time, 



