SUCCESS OP THE COLLEGE. 61 



we have got; and if I have learned anything, I think the young 

 men have learned something in return, of agriculture, both 

 theoretically and practically. 



I must say to you, gentlemen, familiar as you are with my 

 views in relation to an agricultural school in Massachusetts, that 

 from my knowledge of tlie people of this State, I feel assured 

 that the Massachusetts Agricultural College will be a perfect 

 success. Yet I have no very great amount of confidence in the 

 men who now have that institution in charge ; but my confi- 

 dence is based on the knowledge I have that there is a feeling 

 abroad throughout the Commonwealth that such an institution 

 is needed. The constant inquiry which is being made, and 

 which is spreading and growing more and more, day by day, 

 convinces me that the people of the Commonwealth have been 

 educated by the Board of Agriculture up to the point tliat they 

 feel the need of an institution to educate the young men of the 

 Commonwealth for agricultural pursuits. And here is my 

 faith — not in the men who are there to-day, for they may make 

 a failure of it ; but in the people of the Commonwealth, and 

 the felt need of the people of the Commonwealth for an institu- 

 tion of the kind. The men who are there to-day may fail of 

 success, but Massachusetts will find men wlio will make a suc- 

 cess of it ; for those men feel that whenever the old Common- 

 wealth wants men she will find them. True, we have no books 

 to-day such as that institution should have to instruct us in 

 agriculture, but I have faith that somebody in Massachusetts 

 will yet make the very book we need. There is no question 

 about that. We have no system of agriculture to be taught 

 there, but I have faith in the people of the old Commonwealth, 

 or in some of the men of the old Commonwealth, that they will 

 make a system of agriculture that shall be taught there; and 

 which shall be just the system we need. 



Then, I say, I have faith in the permanent success of that 

 institution. I believe that an Agricultural College will succeed 

 in Massachusetts if it fails in every other State in the Union ; 

 for there arc elements of success in our State which do not exist 

 anywhere else. First, because our soil and climate are such 

 that, competing with the great West, we are from necessity 

 driven to a more intelligent course of cultivation. That is one 

 reason why an Agricultural College will succeed in Massachu- 



