1889.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No, 4. 11 



country meetings in a way which has enabled those engaged 

 in the practical work of farming to understand exactly what 

 their position is, and how they can best conduct the business 

 which has fallen into their hands. 



I have great faith, and always have had, in the influence of 

 agricultural colleges ; but my faith in them has been con- 

 firmed more by the stimulating and rousing and cultivating 

 effect they have had upon the general agricultural mind, 

 than by any actual rules of agriculture, which, so far as I 

 am informed, have been presented or laid down. The 

 introduction into our community of a body of young men 

 who, for agricultural purposes, have cultivated their minds, 

 has been a vast thing for the agriculture of the State. 

 Everybody can feel that ; and it has made the fiirmer him- 

 self, as he has been engaged in toil on his land, feel that his 

 occupation was ranged alongside of those great professions 

 which previously had assumed to themselves all the thought 

 and all the culture and all the intellect of the community 

 in which we live ; so that now we have by the side of the 

 great classical schools here a rising agricultural college, to 

 lift the agricultural thought of the community on to that 

 plane which will give it a companionship and connection 

 with all the most intellectual and thoughtful professions in 

 the State. 



We have technology for our mills, we have practical 

 schools for all our occupations ; and, while they do not give 

 us all skilful mechanics and skilful machinists and artisans, 

 they do give us a body of men, who, for the practical ser- 

 vice of life, have their faculties so cultivated that out of the 

 great crop will rise leaders that will teach the State and 

 world what are the possibilities of the business in which 

 they are engaged. All clergymen that graduate from theo- 

 logical schools are not great preachers ; all lawyers that 

 graduate from law schools are not great lawyers ; all gradu- 

 ates of our colleges are not great students. But they belong 

 to a cultivated community ; and, because that community is 

 cultivated, the leaders in these professions to which I have 

 alluded naturally spring up as the best plants grow out of 

 the best cultivated field. The crop is not all uniform. But, 

 as there are superior plants in every man's crop, so in 



