lOO ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN S ASSOCIATION. 



farmer devote to the study of poetry and music, and how 

 much time can the poet-musician afford to devote to the 

 science and practice of agriculture ? These are questions 

 that force themselves upon us. 



To return to the question assigned to me to answer : 

 ** What will education do for the fanner? " 



If you mean by education such mental culture as is 

 obtained in the average high school, I can answer, unhesi- 

 tatingly, it will make him^ a lawyer or a doctor, or a 

 minister or an editor. Or, if by chance circumstances force 

 him to become a farmer, he does it under protest. 



Teach a man German to prepare him to travel in 

 France, and when he arrives at Paris he will realize that 

 there is a mistake somewhere. Show a young farmer all the 

 advantages and attractions of a mercantile or professional 

 life, and none of those which are peculiar to agricultural 

 and horticultural pursuits, and the chances are that he will 

 soon abandon the country and seek the city. The farmer 

 may love music; but if while he is still a farmer, he devotes 

 an undue amount of time to the science of music, and 

 utterly neglects the science of agriculture, the probabilities 

 are that his farm will soon cease to be sufficiently remuner- 

 ative to enable him to gratify his love of song. 



A young man enters the high school. Immediately, 

 he com.mences a course of training exactly calculated to fit 

 him for professional or mercantile life. 



Those branches of study which lawyers and doctors 

 and editors and ministers have ever found advantageous to 

 them in their spheres of labor, are made most prominent in 

 the school. But not one branch of study is found which is 

 especially adapted to the wants of the agriculturist ! 



Does the pupil study chemistry ? He is taught that 

 part of the science which the druggist or physician 

 especially needs. Or he is lead to view in a most super- 

 ficial manner, the science as a whole, from the standpoint of 

 some great investigator. Of its application to agriculture 

 he learns little or nothing. He learns the names of the ele- 

 mentary substances and their atomic weights, but of the 

 compounds of which ordinary soils are composed he knows 

 nothing. He can represent upon the black-board many of 

 the most complicated chemical reactions, but of the effect of 

 mixing wood-ashes and animal manures he is ignorant. 



The chemistry of food (especially of the food of the 



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