No. 4.] COLLEGE AND STATION. 161 



load students away from agriculture, and make, agriculture, 

 the very thing the college was founded for, simply an elec- 

 tive study. We have resisted this pressure as far as practi- 

 cable. The college was founded for agriculture. The State 

 has put into it a large sum of money for that purpose and 

 nothing else, and we cannot conceive it right to deviate from 

 that purpose. Tuesday night the remark was made that it 

 was the aim of the Board and the grange to uplift the fann- 

 ing class. The college ought to have been included when 

 they were mentioned. In connection with that, I happened 

 to read this morning a sentence from the address of that 

 eloquent colored man, Prof. Booker T. Washington, at 

 Atlanta, in which he says : — 



No race can prosper until it learns that there is as much dignity 

 in tilling a field as in writing a poem. Our greatest danger is 

 that we may overlook the fact that the most of us are to live by 

 the product of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall 

 prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and cultivate com- 

 mon labor and put brains and skill into the common occupations 

 of life. 



The aim of the college is to try to teach the boys to 

 put brains and skill into everything they undertake. The 

 Society in New York for the Relief of the Poor has issued 

 a. series of inquiries in regard to the agricultural depres- 

 sion in New York State. The first leaflet has just been 

 published, and in it there is this Aery significant state- 

 ment : — 



While travelling through the agricultural districts, Mr. Kjel- 

 gaard, in reaching the vicinity of Ithaca, N. Y. (where Cornell 

 University is and where the experiment station is), found a con- 

 dition of affairs prevailing among the farmers in that locality that 

 seemed pre-eminently significant. It is true that here also there 

 was a shrinkage of values in farming property, as compared to 

 the high prices of twenty-live years ago, but the depression was 

 comparatively small. There was an air of prosperity about the 

 farmers not found in other sections. The farmers were full of 

 hope, and their children expressed their determination to remain 

 in the country and follow an agricultural life. The reason for 



