AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 13 



paramount object is to enable tbe student to support himself by his own labor while ac- 

 quiring bis education," and be adds " Wbetber tbe student by three hour.-' labor in summer, 

 and two and a balf in winter could board himself is not sufficiently tested, nor can it be till 

 tbe farm is tborougbly subdued." I think be was convinced that tbe students' labor would 

 not enable them to pay their board, for before be left be suggested a plan to the board. 

 This was tbe plan afterwards adopted, of having tbe long vacation in the winter, so as to 

 afford students an opportunity to teach. 



Subsequently, wages were still further lessened, as it was thought the labor was of more 

 value to the students educationally, until the maximum wages now are eight cents an hour, 

 for tbe regularly required work of students. 



GOOD EDUCATION AT SMALL COST. 



The winter vacation, the small wages received for work, tbe plan of boarding at cost, a 

 requirement of law, does place an education in this institution within tbe means of many 

 who could not or would not otherwise furnish it to their sons. 



Many students pay in but about $70 a year to the college, and many of them still less ; 

 some of those who work Saturdays have only from f45 to 860 to pay in for a year of board 

 and instruction and all college dues. 



EXPERIMENT?. 



To experiment for the sake of discovering knowledge, and to teach, that is, to impart ex- 

 isting knowledge, are distinct things. Both are necessary, in agriculture, as in other 

 arts of life. They are not necessarily connected in an agricultural college, for the larger 

 number of agricultural colleges have no farms for field and feeding experiments. Most of 

 tbe European experiment stations of Europe have no college in connection with tin in. 

 Doubt has been expressed whether instructions nnd experimenting can go well together. 

 Thus Professor Hilgard, late of the University of Michigan, now of California University, 

 says : " It is my opinion that in not a few instances the educational interests have suffered 

 by being subordinated, or even too closely co-ordinated with to the experimental work." 

 (Progressive Agriculture, page 25.) 



In my opinion, experiments should be conducted every year at our Agricultural College, 

 and a little farther on I will endeavor to show why. But at present, I ask which purpose 

 is the main one, experimenting or instruction of students. To say that one purpose is tbe 

 main one, is not, of course, to say that the other is not of very great importance ; but if one 

 purpose is comparatively the main one which is it? 



If we can judge of the various enactments of Congress and tbe State the college is pri- 

 marily one for instruction of students ; the debates in Congress and in our own State, tbe 

 addresses made at the opening of the college, tbe example of other institutions, all indicate 

 tbe same. Tbe good to be expected from it is primarily the theoretical and practical in- 

 struction of students. Medicine is a science whose underlying principles are but little bet- 

 ter known than those of agriculture. There is abundant need, and abundant opportunity 

 for original investigation in tbe healing art. But from its schools we look first for educa- 

 tion of young men in medicine. In civil engineering much original investigation is still 

 required. The strength of materials, the laws of fluids flowing through channels, and other 

 subjects afford abundant room for experiments, but from the schools of civil engineering we 

 expect primarily the making of civil engineers, capable of using what knowledge there is 

 to be imparted in the science. Keeping up with tbe advance of knowledge in any depart- 

 ment, giving instruction to classes by lecturing, superintending practice is considered 

 usually a sufficiently laborious work lor a corps of professors in any institution, and tin 

 world is glad if here and there one takes upon himself to add to the sum of human know- 

 ledge. 



Nothing was more natural, however, seeing tbe many problems that agriculture presented 

 for solution, than to hope that tbe union of professors, laboratories and farms might result 

 in a rapid advance of the art, and the speedy establishment of its principles. Such expec- 

 tations, however, were opposed to tbe whole history of the advancement of science. Its 

 growth is slow, and I hesitate not to say that more is often hoped for from a single college 

 in a few seasons than all the colleges of the earth could accomplish if they tried nothing 

 else for the same time. 



ROUGH EXPERIMENTS. 



Experiments may be divided for my purpose into two kinds. Tbe first I shall call "rough 

 experiments." They are such as have determined that dent corn can adapt itself to our 

 climate, that osage orange will make hedges in Illinois prairies, that sorghum is not profit- 

 able as a surnr-inaking plant with us. These and many other results have been gained by 

 repeated trials made by enterprising farmers here and there, who have read, of some one 

 else's success and have risked the trial for themselves. The peculiarities of a soil, or a sea- 



