76 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



tree, or a field full of apple trees, any more valuable than an- 

 other product of the farm that it takes about fifteen or twenty- 

 years to bring to maturity? The young men and the young 

 women that grow up on our farms are worth more than many 

 apple trees. They have not the opportunities in modern life 

 that some of you have had to learn the practical workings of 

 your everyday business. A short statement of what I might 

 take hours or weeks to get at is this, that in the present com- 

 plicated life of the modern world it is absolutely necessary that 

 we have special training in our work to compete with others 

 who have had it elsewhere. 



To give a practical illustration : Germany was said to .lave 

 conquered France in 1870, and thus redeemed the great humilia- 

 tion which Germany suffered under the great Napoleon at the 

 beginning of the nineteenth century, through the work of the 

 German schoolmaster. Twenty-five years ago I suppose it could 

 be said that Germany was the best educated nation on the face 

 of the earth. But it was educated in a kind of philosophy and 

 literature and science that made scholars only — intellectual 

 scholars, but not the practical men that Germany now produces. 

 Wliat is the difference, and why the change? A simple incident 

 will illustrate the whole thing. 



In 1876 we held our Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, and 

 the German commissioners can->e over here. And they had been 

 here but a day or two, looking over the exhibits, before they 

 cabled back to the new chancellor of the German empire : "Our 

 German goods are cheap, but wretched." That is all they said, 

 and all that was necessary. If German goods were wretched, 

 something had to be done to make them better. And you know 

 the result. You can hardly pick up a piece of cutlery or man- 

 ufactured article in your own homes without finding it stamped 

 ^'Made in Germany." 



And why is it? Because Germany, on account of the humilia- 

 tion at such a despatch about its goods, immediately set to work 

 to train all the workers in Germany to do first-class work, 

 through the use of industrial schools. And in twenty-five or 

 thirty years (not thirty years since the schools were established, 

 only twenty-five years since they were running) Germany stands 

 in the forefront of all this earth in manufactured articles. And 

 we must look to our laurels if we maintain a successful com- 

 petiton in any part of the world. That is on the industrial side. 



