208 ANNUAL REPORT. 



that they will be heartily sustained by the farmers of the State, 

 and as a result I have no doubt that hundreds of farmers' sons 

 will be induced to seek further knowledge in the college of agri- 

 culture, while thousands of farmers who know nothing about the 

 technicalities of science will grasp the practical conclusions and 

 apply them successfully to their farm work. If a farmer knows 

 that by increasing his exjienditure twenty per cent in a certain 

 way he can increase the product of his farm fifty per cent, he can 

 work out the problem successfully, whether he knows how to 

 analyze his soil or his fertilizers or not. But while great practi- 

 cal good can be done by the institutes under the direction of the 

 college of agriculture, the real work of the college, the educa- 

 tion of students, must be done at the university. If the farmer 

 boys will avail themselves of the opportunity offered and enter 

 into the regular work of the college of agriculture, I promise 

 them an education that will fit them to be not only good farm- 

 ers, but good and influential citizens of our republic. That, 

 gentlemen, is the present situation so far as the college of agri- 

 culture is concerned and so far as it relates to its provisions for 

 agricultural education. We are making an experiment, and if 

 we are permitted to go on without disturbance I believe the ex- 

 periment will be successful. And if it is successful it will save 

 the State from further temptation to multiply colleges and un- 

 necessarily to duplicate the agencies for education. 



It is claimed by those who insist that the agricultural college 

 should be separated from the university that no college of agri- 

 culture connected with a university has educated any consider- 

 able number of agricultural students, while colleges of agricul- 

 ture which are separate have educated a large number. An ap- 

 peal is thus made to experience. I am not a little surprised that 

 gentlemen as intelligent as many of those are who advance these 

 arguments should be deceived by mere names. You can call a 

 theological seminary an agricultural college if you please, but 

 that does not make it one. You can call a common school, or 

 even a high school, a college, but that does not make it one. 

 You can call a high school or college for general education with 

 an agricultural attachment an agricultural college, but that does 

 not in any just sense make it one. Suppose, for example, that 

 to-morrow the legislature of Minnesota should vote to change the 

 name of the University of Minnesota and to call it the Agricul- 

 tural College of Minnesota, what would be the result? We 

 should go on with our work just as we do now. We should en- 



