ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 253 



leges or stations or of United States Department of Agriculture, three 

 are editors of agricultural newspapers, and nineteen are students in 

 other colleges. The total number in all other occupations is fifty-nine. 

 Of 320 men who have settled occupation, 261 or 82 per cent are engaged 

 in agricultural pursuits.. I am repeating no set phrase, when I say that 

 those who have become farmers are not only generally succeeding from a 

 pecuniary standpoint but they are becoming leaders in the intellectual, 

 social and political life of their respective communities. While a course 

 in agriculture is not to be recommended as a means of political prosperity, 

 yet it is probably quite within the truth to say that there is no surer road 

 to political leadership even than success upon the farm by capable, broad- 

 minded, well educated men. Three of the farmers in the last Illinois leg- 

 islature were trained in agriculture at the University of Illinois and their 

 alma mater has had no reason to be ashamed of thera. 

 Particularly is success coming to those who have completed a four-year 

 course. Many 3'^oung men have taken a one or two-year course in agri- 

 culture and in some institutions a winter term course, and they have 

 gone to farming and have had a fair measure of success, depending much, 

 of course, upon their previous training. Many earnest and successful 

 men have been trained in this way. There is, however, no greater error 

 than to believe that if a man is going to farm a one or two-year course 

 is sufficient, while if he is going to be a teacher or an experimentor he 

 must have a thorough undergraduate and post-graduate training. 

 Farming, in its several branches, is no exception to the rule that the 

 greater the ability, the greater the success. Neither is there any ques- 

 tion that many lines of farming now offer opportunities for the tal- 

 ented. The fa.ct is that a training cannot be too severe for the man 

 who intends to farm. No man needs a rigid training more; in no occu- 

 pation may such training be ma de to count for more. A young man to 

 be perfectly sure of success upc n the farm should take a thorough un- 

 dergraduate study, a year's post-g-aduate work, and then he should spend 

 about three years as superintendent of a farm for some one else, or as a 

 professor of agriculture in some land grant college. He then becomes 



