THE PUBLIC SERVANT 



people, altho every officer of the government is, and ought to 

 be, a servant of the people in the sense that he renders them 

 service. It is with the work of Professor Hopkins as a servant 

 of the people that I am concerned tonight. It is because he 

 has given service of high character, wide in its influence, 

 promoting the welfare of his fellow men that, for my present 

 purposes, I call him a servant of the people, rather than be- 

 cause he was an officer in a state college or a state experi- 

 ment station. Had he had no such official connection, he might 

 have been a servant of the people. Being a servant in both 

 senses, he is a conspicuous example of the public officer, the 

 individual commonly criticized, depreciated, discounted, and 

 attacked, who, notwithstanding these disadvantages, loyally 

 discharges his duty and quietly, cheerfully, and gladly gives 

 his fellow men the benefit of the talent that he has. It is with 

 this thought that I am chiefly concerned at present, and with 

 the lesson that it has for you and me. 



You have listened to an account of the greatness and im- 

 portance of Professor Hopkins' work from the scientific point 

 of view, and from the point of view of the public welfare. 

 You have been told and have thought about the addition to the 

 wealth of the state, or the prevention of loss to the people of 

 the state, which his scientific discoveries and his practical appli- 

 cations of them have brought. In your minds you have meas- 

 ured, in bushels of corn per year for a generation, the addi- 

 tions to, or the prevention of the loss of, the fertility of the 

 flat prairie soil of Illinois. You have counted up, in your 

 minds, the abandoned lands that Hopkins' studies have en- 

 abled, or will enable, the state and the world to restore to 

 fertility. You have imaged the teeming thousands yet un- 

 born who will have a source of livelihood from those added 

 acres, or from the prevention of the destruction of the fertility 

 of acres now being used in Illinois, in America, in Greece, in 

 the world. For there will, in the future, be many a man and 

 woman living whose existence will have been made possible 



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