ILLIKOIS DAIRYMEK'8 ASSOCIATION. 63 



its command to raise the intelligence and thereby add to the skill of its yeo- 

 manry. Every dollar thus expended comes back in material, wealth that 

 makes culture and refinement and even justice itself possible. 



The elements of agricultural science should be introduced into the public 

 schools, if for no other purpose, to make the farmers feel that the higher 

 departments of the schools are for them. We need these studies there as 

 condiments to make the abundant food already there palatable to the farmer 

 boys. We need these studies there to hold the next generation of soil tillers 

 upon the stair-way till they shall get nearer to the top. We need these 

 studies there to open the eyes of half the boys in our public schools to-day, 

 to the fact that there is a higher education which they can take and "organ- 

 ize into a basis for action " as farmers. 



The agricultural colleges do not to any great extent directly reach the 

 masses. They cannot. The boys that will plow are not the ones that will 

 take the University course. The magnificent buildings on these spacious 

 grounds could not accommodate one per cent, of the boys now in Illinois 

 who will be farmers. Not one tenth of one per cent^ of them will ever dark- 

 en its doors, Here will be educated the men who will analyze our soils, 

 not those who will till ; men who will use the transit and the sextant ; not 

 the spade and the plow. Here will be educated the men who will be able to 

 make scientific investigation in the interests of agriculturists;— men who 

 will be capable of making agricultural experiments and from them deduc- 

 ing such laws as will guide the plowman in his work. It is through the 

 public schools, and I had almost said through the public schools, only, that 

 the masses can be educated. 



The agricultural periodicals are an educational power. But these can- 

 not reach those who most need them, because the needy ones themselves are 

 so unfamiliar with the terms of science that they cannot understand the 

 language of scientific agricultural truth. Four men of five whose names 

 are found on the subscription lists of the Prairie Farmer^ the Western Baral, 

 the Farmers^ Beview, the Country Gentleman, or the American Agriculturist 

 do not read the scientific articles. They are not able to do this. They are 

 not familiar with the language. The words there used are not in their vo- 

 cabulary. Neither will they be in the vocabulary of the next generation of 

 farmers except they are put there through the instrumentality of public 

 school education. 



This great university and the intelligent men who are connected with 

 our agricultural periodicals will continue to do the noble and necessary 

 work they are now doing. They will educate the few, and through these 

 few, indirectly but slowly, O how slowly ! the masses. Through the ma- 

 chinery of the public schools the masses may be promptly reached. 



But here we find a diflaculty. Where shall we obtain the teachers? 

 Where are the men who are competent and willing to go into our district 

 schools and judiciously and wisely instruct the boys in the elements of agri- 

 cultural science V Teachers there are who can instruct a boy in the elements 

 of oratory ; who can inspire him with a desire to emulate the virtues of 

 Daniel Webster and Henry Clay; who can create in the youthful mind an 

 ambition to become a civil engineer, a poet, an artist, a divine, a statesman ; 



