84 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



numbers, than these same Agricultural Colleges. But the number of 

 students pursuing the agricultural courses of study is far less than the in- 

 terest of the country demands, and much smaller than we had a right to 

 expect. In this great agricultural State, with its 33,000,000 acres of tillable 

 land, and with more than half its population devoted to agricultural pur- 

 suits, there should be work, not for one agricultural college alone, but for 

 at least a dozen of them. There are already among us, thousands of farm- 

 ers who have reached that state of competency in wealth which enables 

 them to send their sons and daughters to the higher institutions of learn- 

 ing, and at this very hour, there are hundreds of the sons of Illinois farm- 

 ers in the colleges of other States, pursuing courses of higher education to 

 fit them for the various professions which they may have chosen for life. 



This we do not complain of, nor would I lessen the number of those 

 whom Agriculture contributes from its own substantials and sturdj- ranks 

 to the other professions and employments of the country, to the great cities 

 and to the leading places of the land. But what are these same farmers 

 doing for those other sons, who are to be their successors upon the farms, 

 and who would be as much benefited by a liberal education for their call- 

 ing, as those whom they send to professional life. It is for these men of 

 the farms, these future leaders of our agriculturists, that our Agricultural 

 Colleges have been organized. 



The one final and essential condition of success for Agricultural Edu- 

 cation on the American continent is the fuller patronage of American 

 Agricultural colleges by American farmers. Baron Liebig pronounced 

 the success of Agricultural education in Europe " immense." The farm- 

 ers can make it immense here. Your own numbers are overwhelming. 

 You have the soundest bodies and brains in the country in 3'our ranks. 

 Fill with your brightest sons and daughters the Colleges which Congress 

 has given j^ou. Send if you will some to the professions and the cities. 

 They need fresh blood. Woe to the city whose ranks no longer receive 

 fresh recruits from the country homes. Educate a portion of your chil- 

 dren for other callings, but not always <7ie best. Believe in your calling 

 and in the career it may afford. Let the Colleges of Agriculture swell till 

 they shall be more nearly commensurate with the class thej' represent, the 

 industry they are designed to foster and the magnificent fields of science, 

 of a world-sustaining art to which they would educate your sons and suc- 

 cessors. 



And who can tell what improvements might come to Agriculture itself, 

 and what honor to the agricultural classes, if, to-day, the sons of a thou- 

 sand of our leading farmers, who, within a few years, will stand in their 

 fathers' stead, could be sent to the Agricultural Colleges, to make them- 

 selves masters of Agricultural science and to fit themselves by a broad 

 and liberal training for the public duties and advocacy which they will 

 owe to their class. 



Let farmers cease to complain of the impositions practiced upon them, 

 and of the wrongs they suffer at the hands of more educated classes, till 



