254 MICHIGAN STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 



strive toward raising the average, both of men and women, to 

 the level on which the highest type of family now stands, among 

 American farmers, among American skilled mechanics, among 

 American citizens generally; for in all the world there is no 

 better and healthier home life, no finer factory of individual 

 character, nothing more representative of what is best and most 

 characteristic in American life than that which exists in the higher 

 type of American family; and this higher type of family is to be 

 found everywhere among us, and is the property of no special 

 group of citizens. 



The best crop is the crop of children ; the best products of the 

 farm are the men and women raised thereon; and the most in- 

 structive and practical treatises on farming, necessary though 

 they be, are no more necessary than the books, which teach us our 

 duty to our neighbor, and above all to the neighbor who is of our 

 own household. You young men and women of the agricultural 

 and industrial colleges and schools — and, for that matter, you 

 who go to any college or school — must have some time for light 

 reading; and there is some light reading quite as useful as heavy 

 reading, provided, of course, that you do not read in a spirit 

 of mere vacuity. Aside from the great classics, and thinking 

 only of the many healthy and stimulating books of the day, it 

 is easy to pick out many which can really serve as tracts, because 

 they possess what many avowed tracts and treatises do not, the 

 prime quality of being interesting. You will learn the root 

 principles of self-help and helpfulness toward others from Mrs. 

 Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, just as much as from any formal 

 treatise on charity; you will learn as much sound social and 

 industrial doctrine from Octave Thanet's stories of farmers and 

 wageworkers as from avowed sociological and economic studies ; 

 and I cordially recommend the first chapter of Aunt Jane of 

 Kentucky for use as a tract in all families where the men folks 

 tend to selfish or thoughtless or overbearing disregard of the 

 rights of their womankind. 



