AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 97 



that no statesman was ever made so by books, schools and street 

 discussions without actual experience in some department of 

 government. 



It is, of course, to be expected that an agricultural college 

 would have the means of making experiments; but each experi- 

 ment could be made only under a single set of circumstances, 

 while the agency of local societies, in connection with other 

 parts of tlie plan that I have the honor diffidently to present, 

 would convert at once a county or a state into an experimental 

 farm for a given time and a given purpose. The local club 

 being always practical and never theoretical, dealing with things 

 always and never witli signs, presenting only facts and never 

 conjectures, would, as a school for the young farmer, be quite 

 equal, and in some respects siqDcrior, to any that the govern- 

 ment can establish. But, it may be asked, will you call that a 

 school which is merely an assembly of adults without a teacher? 

 I answer that, technically, it is not a school ; but that in reality 

 such an association is a school in the best use of the word. 

 A school is, first, for the development of powers and qualities 

 whose germs already exist ; then for the acquisition of knowl- 

 edge previously possessed by others ; then for the prosecution of 

 original inquiries and investigations. The associations of which 

 I speak would possess all these powers and contemplate all 

 these results ; but that their powers might be more efficient and 

 for the advancement of agriculture generally, it seems to me fit 

 and proper for the State to appoint scientific and practical men 

 as agents of the Board of Agriculture and lecturers upon agri- 

 cultural science and labor. If an agricultural college were 

 founded, a farm would be required, and at least six professors 

 Avould be necessary. Instead of a single farm, with a hundred 

 young men upon it, accept gratuitously, as 3^ou would no 

 doubt liave opportunity, the use of many farms for experiments 

 and repeated trials of crops, and at the same time educate, not 

 a hundred only, but many thousand young men, nearly as well 

 in theor}'- and science, and much better in practical labor, than 

 they could be educated in a college. Six professors, as agents, 

 could accomplish a large amount of necessary work ; possibly, for 

 the present, all that would be desired. Assume, for this inquiry, 

 that Massachusetts contains three hundred agricultural towns ; 

 divide these towns into sections of fifty each ; then assign one 



13 



