STATE GRANGE OF ILLINOIS. 86 



they shall cease from their suicidal course of bringing up in comparative 

 ignorance, the sons who are to be their successors on the farm, while they 

 give the benelit of the most costly classical training to those other .-ons, 

 whom they send to the law and other professions, and to the great busi- 

 ness centers of the country. 



May we not reasonably look to this great farmers' movement, which has 

 awakened the country by its magnitude and its power, — to this organization 

 of the farmers, stretching its net-work over the whole Union, and extend- 

 ing its organizing influence to the most remote part of the rural districts 

 — may we not look, I ask, to this organization to remedy this great blun- 

 der and mistake, and to see to it that there shall be trained up in this 

 country a class of men who, while they remain Agriculturists, shall also 

 be the peers of the wisest, the most cultured and the most practised, in 

 their educational attainments and in their cultivated powers? 



The great work on which you have entered as an Order will not be 

 finished in your lifetime. Men who are yet unborn will be called upon to 

 fill the ranks and fight the unfinished battles. It is yours to see that they 

 have trained leaders, agriculturists whose brains, keen as Damascus 

 blades, shall be polished by culture, and armed with learning, to fight 

 with all their father's courage and more than their father's skill, mo- 

 nopoly and wrong. 



