66 ILLINOIS dairymen's ASSOCIATION. 



who are daily practicing the art of agriculture and to whom a knowledge of 

 the merest rudiments of agricultural science would be of inestimable value. 

 Let us not then make the mistake in our public school wotk of putting off 

 the investigation of agricultural sc ence until the pupil shall be thoroughly 

 prepared to engage in its systematic study. Rather let us catch and hold 

 the attention of the farmer pupils by presenting the more simple and practi- 

 cal truths selected almost at random from the broad field of agricultural 

 knowledge. Tnus and only thus shall we enlist him in the good work of 

 lifting himself as a farmer and with him his farmer neighbors, to a higher 

 educational level. 



Says Prof. Ddvid Swing in a recent article entitled "Educated Farmers:" 

 "For many years, and even centuries, education took the direction of theology. 

 By degrees it widened out so as to set aside a little of brains for the legal pro- 

 fession. But lawyers were amizingly scarce from Cicero to PufCendorf. 

 Education then widened out and omitted about a million monks and piiests 

 to make a Shakespeare once in a while. It went on expandinir until doctors 

 and poets and editors appeared. At last educjition spread out and began 

 to send into the fields educated farmers." 



This good work of educating the soil tillers has but just begun. Of the 

 farmers only a few can as yet be said to be educated (among these as a matter 

 of course are those who attend the meetings of this association) and upon 

 these devolves the duty of assisting in another widsning out of educati jn 

 until it shall include the rank and file of the soil tillers. To do this we need 

 the agricultural department of our University; we need experiment stations; 

 we need our ably edited periodicals; we need the associations of dairymen, 

 of wool growers, of stock-breeders. 



We need every educational influence or power that can be brought to 

 bearin this direction. But io order to make all these a success in the high- 

 est degree, we need the public schools; that through them the farmers of the 

 next generation may be prepared to appieciate and utilize the work which 

 is already being done by these other educati. >nal forces. That through them 

 the very class in whose interest this University was planted may be enabled 

 to put forth its hand and pluck some of the ripened fruits; that through them 

 the feet of those who cultivate our prairie soil may be lifted out of the mire 

 of indifference, and placed firooly upon the boitom step of that grand stair- 

 way which, without tailing them away from the farm will lead them to 

 a higher educational level and to such intellectual activities as will divest 

 farm life of much of its monotony and will make of them intelligent, pro- 

 gressive, law-abiding, wealth-producing farmer citizens of this republic. 



Dr. Detmers : I understand that w^e are to continue the discussion of 

 Mr. Chester's paper of this afternoon. I think that Mr. Chester said that he 

 attributed the prevalence of disease among swine to improvements in breeds, 

 that by forcing the pigs their constitution was weakened. There is undoubt- 

 edly some truth in that, but to say that this hog cholera can be attributed to 

 that cause would go too far. This cholera was imported into the coun- 

 try with pigs that came from England, over thirty years ago, into Kentucky, 

 I think, and from there it has spread all over the country. That disease is 

 caused by a small microscopic organization ; it is no respecter of any breed ; 



