ANNUAL WINTER MEETING. 71 



and accessible. In Minnesota we have the most successful of 

 these schools to be found in the country and educators in other 

 states are looking to us and wondering if we have solved the 

 problem. Only within a fortnight the professor of agriculture 

 of the Maine agricultural college was looking over our farm 

 school with the idea of profiting by what he might see that 

 would aid him in starting a low grade agricultural school in his 

 state. He remarked to me that he had twelve boys in his 

 classes of agriculture, while in the same institution over one 

 hundred were taking the course in engineering. He also said 

 that he had read about the success of our school, but felt it 

 necessary before believing the report true, to come and see it 

 himself. 



It is not necessary for me to dwell on the importance of ag- 

 ricultural education to an audience composed of horticulturists 

 such as I see before me. You know of its value. You are 

 confronted by many problems and have always shown your- 

 selves appreciative of any efforts that have been made to make 

 agriculture a rational science and to do away with the empiri- 

 cal formulas and quackery that have so often hindered its de- 

 velopment. I have been identified with agricultural educa- 

 tion for the last sixteen years, since when a boy with a love 

 for it, I entered the agricultural college in Massachusetts. 



I thank God that I had a father who had a broad idea of the 

 possibilities in agricultural education and who encouraged his 

 son with the remark that it would yet be many years before 

 the market for educated farmers would be overstocked. I 

 love this work and believe it has great possibilities, 

 which are probabilities. I object now and have al- 

 ways objected to agricultural schools whose graduates 

 mostly become book-keepers, merchants and engineers, 

 and I repeat now what I have often said in private to my 

 colleagues, that the success of the agricultural school of Min- 

 nesota lies not in graduating book-keepers, merchants, etc., 

 but in having ten years hence an active, aggressive, earnest, 

 successful alumni on the farms of the state. The time is coming 

 when every legislature that convenes at our capitol will have 

 in it some graduates of the state agricultural school. This 

 will not come because they prefer politics to honest business, 

 but because they will manage well in their own business ; will 

 have clear cut, clean ideas of what is best for their occupation, 

 and the offices will be forced upon them. It will be a happy 

 day for our state when that time comes. Such young men are 



