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when this job was undertaken, but like Minerva of old, the giant was born 

 fully matured, as events proved, and through its medium of expression and 

 influence the farmers of the State made not only their wishes but also the 

 necessities of the situation known. 



It was a purely unselfish service in the interest of the whole public and 

 has been so regarded. There were other agricultural organizations, and 

 good ones, but none so well cut out for this particular job as was the Farmers' 

 Institute. It was the agency by which public opinion was crystallized and 

 expressed, by which Amos Moore, James H. Cooledge, S. Noble King, Charles 

 F. Mills, A. P. Grout, N. B. Morrison, Ralph Allen, Frank I. Mann and a 

 host of others, many of whom have long since gone to their reward, showed 

 the State at once its duty and its opportunity. 



If the Institute had never rendered another public service than to 

 function as the means of providing Illinois with a real College of Agriculture, 

 it would have fully justified its existence. 



But that was only a beginning. A real study of Illinois agriculture 

 from the standpoint of science and of progress showed at once the place that 

 research and experimentation must take in the scheme of State development 

 in the field of agriculture, and a systematic study of the soils of the State 

 was begun under the special patronage and support and advice of the 

 Institute. 



It was many years ago that through the activities and at the solicitation 

 of the Farmers' Institute the State Soil Survey was begun, and it has con- 

 tinued uninterrupted ever since. It is at once the most thorough, the most 

 exhaustive, the most beneficial, and the most far reaching study of the soil 

 ever entered upon by any state or any nation of the earth. 



INDEPENDENT SELF MANAGEMENT ESSENTIAL. 



This is my answer to the question whether or not the University could 

 conduct the institutes better than the Institute. The institutes with a 

 little "I" are meetings, and almost anybody could conduct them if he could 

 get people to attend. But the Institute with a big "I" is an institution, and 

 it cannot be "conducted," or "held," or otherwise managed except by itself. 

 To attempt to put any one of its creatures over it is to destroy it. Nor must 

 we mistake the shadow for the substance by assuming that when we have 

 attended an institute meeting we have seen the Institute. 



The institute as a meeting is good or bad according as the immediate 

 officers were wise or unwise in choosing topics, the speakers in treating 

 them, and the attendance in giving real attention to the subjects under 

 discussion. But the Institute as an institution is as good as the men that 

 make it, and as long as the best men will volunteer into its service for their 

 expenses only and will give it the best of their thought, just so long will it 

 be our most elastic and at the same time the most powerful single agent of 

 progress, especially along lines likely to be neglected by leading and direct 

 commercial interests. 



For example: Out of the survey and the experiments in the behavior 

 of our different soil types has grown the idea of a System of Permanent 

 Agriculture. Some have called it the "Hopkins System," because that great 

 man was practically the inventor, as he was also its most ardent and able 

 exponent." Some have called it the "Illinois System," because it was worked 

 out in Illinois and the details have been so widely criticized elsewhere. 



It might be called the Common Sense System, because it stands to reason 

 that we must put back as much as we take off if our successors are to 

 maintain themselves. It might be called the Inevitable System, because we 

 shall ail be forced to it, the only question being whether it shall produce 

 at a high or at a starvation rate. 



It might be called the Farmers' Institute System, because that has been 

 the popular agency that has sustained it all these years, and given it a 

 hearing and a sympathetic trial. 



Whatever it may or may not be called and what's in a name after all? 

 the thing is with us to stay. What is Illinois going to do with her soils? 

 is a question that the Farmers' Institute has asked, not only through the 

 researches of the Experiment Station, which it helped to endow, but by Its 



