232 MICHIGAN STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 



nition of this principle of the absolute necessity of original in- 

 vestigation to the highest type of professional education as in 

 the field of agricultural training and agricultural education. 

 Is not this a great achievement for the farmer ? Has he not in 

 this respect set an example to every other profession in this 

 desire to develop the great interests, social, economic, and pohti- 

 cal, intrusted to his care in our social organization ? So far as I 

 know there has been no such development in the field of engineer- 

 ing experimentation and engineering investigation and research, 

 although that forms the other side of the work of this great group 

 of institutions. The federal government has not yet made an 

 appropriation for the engineering experiment station as it has 

 for the agricultural experiment station. It has not yet made an 

 appropriation for the medical laboratory, which is the medical 

 experiment station, or for the chemical laboratory, or for the 

 legal seminary, which would represent the center of scientific 

 investigation and research corresponding to the agricultural 

 experiment station. Friends, this is a great achievement for 

 the farmer. He has laid the education of this country under a 

 lasting debt of obligation. This principle which appUes to 

 agriculture applies to engineering exactly, applies to medicine, 

 applies to law, applies to education, and yet the farmer has been 

 the only one to grasp the idea and to imbed it so soHdly in the 

 fundamental structure of agricultural education that there is no 

 danger that we shall ever depart from it. 



The reflex influence of this upon the other departments has 

 already been striking and is destined to be more striking in the 

 future. The legislature of Illinois at its last session appro- 

 priated the sum of $50,000 per annum for a graduate school. 

 I think the most telling argument used in the support of this 

 project before the legislature was the simple one that this repre- 

 sented to a certain extent in other lines what the agricultural 

 experiment station represented in the field of agricultural educa- 

 tion and research. 



