196 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



and professional men — the men who have made our noble republic what it 

 is? Statistics show they come from the farm and from the district school. 



Farmers, will your boys, whom you are now training and educating, 

 fill the places which will soon be vacated by these worthy predecessors 7 

 With the opportunities' they have, they should be better statesmen, better 

 business men and farmers, better ministers, better doctors, better lawyers 

 and more learned professors. 



But, is mental culture the omy object to be taught? Can a solid men- 

 tal foundation be laid upon which to build a noble, enduring manhood, 

 unless there be in that same structure as sure and as firm a moral founda- 

 tion? 



Who was Thomas Corwin? A mental meteor; there let his memory 

 rest. 



Who was Abraham Lincoln? A noble and enduring monument erected 

 by and dedicated to our nation and the world by the district school. And 

 where can these rock foundations i>est be laid? In the farm home and in 

 the district school. 



When you take your boy out of your own district school and send him 

 to the town school, that day you commence weaning him from the farm, 

 and on that same day you commence weaning him from parental restraint. 

 That day you strike a death-blow to the vitality and efficiency of your own 

 district school. And too often on that day the "old man" and the "old 

 woman" put a death mortgage en the farm. 



There are two institutions which cannot be run successfully on skim 

 milk. One is a creamery and the other is a district school. If you send 

 skim milk to your creamery, you must expect skim milk returns. And if 

 you take the cream out of your district school, you will soon have a skim 

 milk teacher in a skim milk school, for no teacher, however efficient, can 

 make a success of a school unless he has the material in that school to make 

 it a success. 



I will cite the following instance, which is no fancy picture but a fact, 

 in proof of my position. 



In the sixties there was a district adjoining a town of about 3000 in- 

 habitants. It was a district which had taken great pride in its school, and 



