268 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



beneficence, without charge to any taxpayer, what will with scarcely a 

 doubt, soon become the most completely equipped, the miost comprehen- 

 sive in its round of learning and the most richly endowed university of 

 the older kind in the world. 



About three years ago when this university had been here more than 

 thirty years, when in all there had been expended upon it $4,000,000 or 

 15,000,000, the Illinois Farmers' Institute appointei a committee to visit 

 the university and see how it was faring with agriculture here. 



The committee made if 3 visit and investigation and reported that 

 they found an agricultural plant worth about $7,000— $7,000! Shades of 

 the founders! Excuse us farmers for what we could not help and for- 

 give us for what we could have h elped but did not. 



But my friends I doubt very much if Turner and Bateman and Greg- 

 ory and their co-laborers would have any harsh words for us if they could 

 communicate with us. They sav/ how the educational wind was blowing 

 from the farm to the town, from agricultural to professional life, before 

 they went. It was only a breeze in their day, but maybe from their spirit 

 homes they have seen that breeze increase to a blizzard, sweeping things 

 toward the town and toward the occupations of the town, as that ather 

 kind of blizzard; sr^^eeps the snow s of the plain upon the hamiiet m its 

 path. 



I am ready' to believe that th ose good men if they thought we could 

 hear them, instead of chiding us, would s'ay, boys., you "done noble" even 

 to hold down your little cow barn in such a gust. 



I have not much to say about the $7,000 plant. When the farmers 

 heard about it, a movement to right things, general, intelligent, detei- 

 mined, irresistible v^as begun. This great agricultural building is one 

 of the fruits of that movement. The generous appropriation by the last 

 legislature for better equipment of the plant, and for other purposes of 

 the college; is another fruit of that movement. There will be other and 

 perennial crops of good fruit which that movement will bear. 



Farmers are conservative; they are not easily moved individually, 

 and are harder to move en masse, but when they move, other thinga will 



