SEMI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 31 



conditions as to give a range of production surpassed by no state 

 or country. Originally covered with a dense timber growth 

 of a wide range of varieties and of prolific size, it is therefore 

 the home of trees for commercial profit and to add to the adorn- 

 ment of farm and landscape. These same conditions give us a 

 wide variety of fruits of such quality as to add fame to our 

 commonwealth as a fruit-producing state. 



All the staple cereals are grown here with profit, and all 

 of the best varieties of pasture and fodder grasses are native and 

 abundant. All these contribute to make possible the ideal 

 home state and to give the occupants thereof a broader range of 

 opportunity and profitable husbandry than can easily be found 

 elsewhere. For a broadly mixed husbandry, or a shifting from 

 one specialty to another, Michigan offers opportunities unsur- 

 passed. So bounteously favored, it perhaps is but naturally 

 resultant that our state is a land of schools and educational 

 privileges of a high standard. Our general system has been 

 commended by representatives of a foreign nation after extensive 

 travel to discover the best system for adoption in their home 

 country. Our rural schools are the basis of it all, for histories 

 and biographies of successful men and women, in all of the laud- 

 able ambitions of life, quite generally trace back to the school- 

 house in the country as the place where the foundation part of 

 their education was attained, and in many cases it furnished the 

 total of their school education. In these schools, so near to 

 the homes of the people that the education of the head to think 

 and to deduce conclusions can co-operate with the hands in 

 doing useful things, the essential foundation for usefulness and 

 happiness is laid and the correctness of our plan is proven. 



Then after laying this solid foundation, our state has pre- 

 pared itself still further to educate and to equip, even to what 

 we may term a finishing point, our sons and daughters for the 

 many open avenues to industrial and professional usefulness. 



From the standpoint of preparation for educating the youth 



