such doctrines, and against their purpose, must be arrayed the honest purpose 

 of the industrial citizen ; but to be efficiently so arrayed, he must be endowed 

 with power to curb vaulting ambition; and in this government there is but one 

 legitimate power that of knowledge. 



Government must be administered by occupations, and not by zeal or efficiency 

 in party service, as now; for it is the occupations of society that the legisla- 

 tion of government should most regard, and not those measures enunciated in 

 the platform of parties. Agriculture lies at the base of these occupations. 

 Manufactures, the mechanic arts, commerce, and its aids, as currency, repose upon 

 and exist from it. To legislate for these directly, or from them, indirectly, 

 demands the knowledge of these pursuits. Yet they are almost unknown in 

 the administration of our government. 



Purposing, then, to be the advocate of such an education as will place the 

 industrial classes on a complete equality with the professional, in the discharge of 

 the duties which belong to both alike as citizens of one country, I shall now 

 more directly reply to the question, what sciences should be taught in our in- 

 dustrial colleges ? 



All instruction relates to two things, the right discharge of duty to ourselves 

 as individuals and as members of the community. Of these in their order: 



1. To ourselves. Self-support is the first duty of every person to himself and 

 family. And for this does he follow an occupation. An industrial pursuit, 

 whether on the farm or in the work shop or in the counting-house, demands 

 whatever of knowledge it has as an art. But how much of principle is embodied 

 in this art ! Not two crops that I have grown on the farm but demanded a 

 modified culture to meet the ever changing influences of the atmosphere and 

 soil. What is that atmosphere, then ? and what that soil 1 Wherein lies their 

 necessity to plant life ? Who can answer but he who has a knowledge of 

 meteorology, geology, and vegetable physiology ? Agriculture has its hundreds 

 of vexed questions in its art unsettled, because individual experiments are ap- 

 parently contradictory in their results. And they are so simply because those who 

 make them do not perceive the presence of changing influences from season, 

 because they are ignorant of the action that such changes exert on the soil, 

 and vegetable growth ; and they cannot perceive it because of their ignorance 

 of these sciences. 



And hence, too, the absolute necessity of the experimental farm as a part of 

 these industrial colleges, that what individual farmers cannot determine by 

 experiment, for the reason stated, may be by professors learned in science and 

 and art, and therefore competent to unfold the peculiar elements of growth in 

 every experiment. 



Again, let us take the simple act of housing stock in winter as an illustration 

 of the utility of the knowledge of animal physiology. To understand the reason 

 of so doing involves a knowledge of the nature of food, its elements, its diges- 

 tion, and what digestion is, its assimilation, of the nature of oxygen and carbon, 

 of their union in combustion, how this combustion creates animal heat, what 

 causes exhaust this heat; or, in other words, how food is uselessly consumed 

 when the animal is exposed. To fully understand these demands not only a 

 knowledge of animal physiology, but of chemistry also. It is just as important 

 to have a knowledge of them, if we would understand the reason for cleanliness, 

 regularity in feeding, ventilation, light, &c. Mere art may often be successful, 

 without a knowledge of the principles upon which it is based, but then it must 

 accept and follow definite rules, and then, as in the unsettled problems in 

 farming alluded to, it gropes blindly, and hence, as in the steps of the blind, 

 its way is devious, its forward course is faltering, being checked by doubts. 

 And this necessarily so because of its ignorance of the nature of the causes 

 operating. The prayer of Ajax for light needs to come up from the farm and 

 work shop, as well as from the battle-field. 



