206 BOARD OF AGRICLLTURB. 



THE FARMER AND HIGHER EDUCATION.* 



BY PROF. C. H. HALL, OK FRANKLIN COLLEGE. 



Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Oentlemen: I appreciate the privilege of being per- 

 mitted to address so many men before me this afternoon, who represent the farming 

 interests of our State. While I have never been a practical farmer, yet, oftentimes 

 in my study, when my brain has been wearied with the philosophy of Plato, and 

 the beauties of Homer, or meditating on that splendid " March of the Ten Thou- 

 sand" and kindred lines of thought, in memory I go back to the days of my boy- 

 hood, when, barefooted, I pressed my feet in the soft, mellow, upturned earth and 

 heard the blackbirds sing and saw them pluck the long slender worm frcm the 

 furrow. As it is my privilege to address you at this hour I come with the thought, 

 The Farmer and Higher Education. 



By higher education is meant the education that some of your boys and girls 

 are receiving from the colleges and universities of our State and other States. Be- 

 yond the shadow of a doubt the Indiana farmer's higher education should^^come 

 from the universities and Christian colleges of Indiana. These are of vital im- 

 portance and inestimable value to the sons and daughters of our State. Consider 



First. The farmer's attitude toward the higher education. In traveling over our 

 State from north to south, and east to west, there is scarcely a neighborhood in 

 which you will not find the majority of our farmers in an attitude of practical in- 

 difference towards our colleges. The farmer too often feels that the higher educa- 

 tion sustains no relationship to himself. It is nece>sary for the man who desires to 

 be a doctor, a Governor of our State, or President of the United States, but to him, 

 the man who plows and gathers in the grain, this higher education is of no appre- 

 ciable value. 



Be it said to the credit of those whom I address this evening that there are 

 many who may not be classified thus, and \et there is a multitude of farmers all 

 over our State with whom you will have to reason and plead earnestly, if their 

 sons are to take a college course, and thus secui-e the advantages of the higher 

 schools of learning. To be really educated there must be a well drilled and discip- 

 lined mind. No man can claim to be an educated man, no matter how many 

 M. D.s, D. D.s or LL. D.s may be attached to his name, if he has not a disciplined 

 intellect. He must also be in the possession of knowledge. These two factors— a 

 disciplined mind and an accumulated fund of knowledge— mark conspicuously the 

 truly educated man. No matter where the discipline and the knowledge are ob- 

 tained, whether in the work-shop, or in the counting room, or on the farm, if he 

 possesses these two factors he is really an educated man. Another assumption alto- 

 gether too prevalenrt among our farmers is that the higher education does not con- 



* Read before the Annual Agricultural Convention January 6, 1885. 



