33 



tions is not adequate to meet the economic and social problems 

 now involved in agricultural betterment. Mere vocational effi- 

 ciency never has become the measure of a broadly useful man 

 or of a strong community, and never will. Do not think that I 

 deprecate the popular educational efforts that have proved so 

 useful in this and other states. I would not have less of them 

 but I would have them rest more fully on a substratum of sound 

 knowledge and safe thinking, which it is the function of the 

 college to build. The investigator in his laboratory and the 

 teacher in his class room may receive less of popular apprecia- 

 tion and approval than those workers who meet the public, but 

 they may rest content in the assurance that their labors are 

 supremely important. 



I am confident that these functions of the experiment station 

 and the college, the importance of which I have been trying to 

 set forth, will be magnified as time goes on. We are coming 

 to see, with surprising tardiness, to be sure, that the college is 

 but a single factor in a great agricultural movement and that 

 it does not occupy the whole field of agricultural education, and 

 cannot do so. The needs of a majority of our youth must be 

 met by other agencies. Notwithstanding their gjeat useful- 

 ness, these agencies must be something else than the farmer's 

 institute and agricultural press whose discussions are too con- 

 flicting and partake too largely of mere personal opinion to 

 effectively diffuse a body of well organized knowledge. The 

 secondary school, whether the academy or high school, and 

 even the grades below these, must be readjusted to a type of 

 instruction more effective in meeting present day demands be- 

 fore we shall establish a widespread, systematic and well scru- 

 tinized knowledge of the environment of farm life. Some day 

 we shall remove from off the face of the earth the apology for 

 a schoolhouse that now stands in every township and substitute 

 space and materials for instruction Ln the realities of human 

 life and activity, and we shall train teachers to utilize these 

 facilities. When these things are done for the schools, when 

 educational work of the more popular kind becomes organized 

 s(. as not to divert the energies of the investigator and the col- 

 lege teacher, then we shall have a division of effort among 

 several agencies that will make for the higher efficiency of 

 them all. 



