STATE GRANGE OF ILLINOIS. 79 



cultural course, but to pursue such studies as might prepare them for the 

 study of law or medicine. I do not dispute the farmers' right to choose 

 these callings for their sons, but surely, no one but themselves should be 

 held responsible for their choice. 



As the expectation itself was a mistake, so its failure is a necessity. 

 The agricultural college may, perhaps, in time make farm life more pala- 

 table and attractive, but it will be by diflusing intelligence, culture and 

 social privileges through farmers' homes, not by keeping farmers' children 

 from more tempting pursuits. 



8rd. Others had observed the ignorant and unbusiness like way in 

 which too many farmers manage their farms and affairs. They had 

 noticed the heedless and ruinous waste of the utility of the soil; the fre- 

 quent incompetency of agricultural laborers, and the many sad failures of 

 the farmer's business, and they thought of agricultural colleges as a 

 remedy. They did not pause to reflect that heedlessness, indolence and 

 stupidity are common among men, and that a mere knowledge of science 

 and its applications cannot correct the bad habits formed in ciiildhood, 

 and, perhaps, bred in the very bones. Nor did they reflect that out of the 

 millions, but few comparatively could receive the benefits of the agricul- 

 tural colleges. 



Crowded to their utmost capacity, these colleges could not receive one 

 in a hundred of the agricultural population. 



4th. Others still had a higher conception of the character and extent of 

 agricultural science. The great problems of the farm had aroused their 

 attention, and they were anxious to have experiments made, investigations 

 prosecuted, and the great secrets of soil and seed, of animal and vegetable 

 life and growth, brought to light and proclaimed throughout the earth. 

 They looked to the agricultural college as a place for the discovery of 

 agricultural truth. They wished it to prosecute experiments to test the 

 value of breeds, breeding and the feeding processes of seeds and cultures, 

 and of every new thought which puzzled the farmer's brains or crept into 

 the farmer's papers. 



And the agricultural college ought certainly to hold a leading place in 

 this work of perfecting agricultural science; and it will, if you will con- 

 sent to make it a true agricultural experiment station, with competent 

 men who can give their time to experimenting, and with the necessary 

 means, the costly apparatus and labor required in this work. But the 

 teachers who give their whole time and strength to their classes cannot 

 be expected to conduct careful and laborious experiments. 



Still other and wilder expectations were fctrmed, which I have neither 

 the time to notice nor any anxiety to refute. 



DIKFKUENT PLANS OF COLLEGES. 



As men differed in regard to what tlie Agricultural College was to do, so 

 they diflered in respect to what it ought to be. Some would have made it 

 a mere school of practice; others would have resembled it to the law 

 schools and medical schools, making it purely professional and merely 



