78 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



these extravagant and unwise expectations. The waking reality has been 

 found different from the unreasoning dream. Tried by a fairer test, agri- 

 cultural education has been, not a failure, but a remarkable success. 



Allow me to mention some of these expectations : 



1st. It was expected that agricultural colleges would largely increase 

 the intelligence of the entire agricultural classes and give to them edu- 

 cated and powerful leaders, able to cope with the champions of other 

 great public interests before the public tribunals. 



The farming population, groaning under burdens and disabilities which 

 were felt to be intolerable and believed unjust, and looking in all direc- 

 tions for the causes and the cure, easily saw that the superior intelligence 

 and culture of those whom they regarded as their rivals and oppressors, 

 gave to them an undue advantage. They rightly concluded that educa- 

 tion alone could meet education, as fire fights fire and thought, that if they 

 would have educated farmers, they must have farmers' colleges. 



And this expectation will be met, but not as soon as some hoped. Edu- 

 cation diffuses itself slowly. The colleges, at best, can educate only a few 

 out of the millions, but these few, will in time, lend inspiration, knowl- 

 edge and culture to the thousands who look to them for leadership. Not 

 all the lawyers, doctors and preachers are college-bred; but enough of 

 each class have participated in the higher education, to give character 

 and standing to these several professions. The educated ones have made 

 the spirit of learning prevalent in the class, and the demand for it almost 

 imperative. So we may hope that, in the future, the graduates of our 

 agricultural colleges will become apostles of agricultural education, 

 diffusing it among their associates, and making the demand for it much 

 more general. 



2d. Of a different character was the expectation of those who were 

 vexed to see all the college-bred sons of farmers, (and farmers' sons 

 have gone to colleges as often as those of any other class,) refusing to 

 return to the farms, but making their way to cities to enter professional 

 life or trade. These people wished for colleges for farmers' children ; 

 colleges which should make them learned and leave them farmers. It 

 was not agricultural colleges, but colleges for agriculturists, which they 

 wanted. The President of a State Agricultural Society told me he did 

 not want the agricultural colleges to teach agriculture, but he wanted a 

 place to send his boys, where they could be educated without being 

 spoiled for the farm. 



The evil, if evil it is, which he complained of, is deeper and nearer 

 home than he thought. 



Farmers' sons go to the law and other professions full frequently with 

 the advice and consent of their ambitious fathers and mothers. " John is 

 too smart to remain a mere farmer," say they, " let us make a lawyer and 

 a gentleman of him." Not a year has passed in the history of the Illinois 

 Industrial University, that farmers' sons have not appeared at its doors, 

 sent there by their fathers with express injunctions not to take the agri- 



