^^ ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



a copy of this essay, in pamphlet form, into the hands of every public school 

 teacher m this state. It has been my fortune, sir, to be a teacher in an insti- 

 tution of learning in the east, between the high schools and the higher sci- 

 entific schools and colleges, and connected with an institution that had a 

 large fund of endowment for helping poor boys to get an education. Our 

 experience was, that out of every four boys that came there without a cent 

 wishing to get a good education, three of them would want to study Latin 

 and Greek, and not much of anything else. The fourth, perhaps, would be 

 willing to take up some of the practical and scientific studies. We have 

 dozens and dozens of young men coming to our house, who, in spite of all 

 our influence, insisted upon taking themselves right away from everything 

 they were fit for just about far enough to spoil themselves for good farmers 

 and good mechanics, having neither means nor brains to go further. On the 

 contrary, those young men who came to us with a broader view of life and 

 who took the scientific side, almost invariably found themselves on their 

 feet. I think I am safe in saying that out of five men who graduated from, 

 the scientific course, four would find themselves well placed in life earning 

 their living, bef .)re one out of five taking the classical side would be getting 

 anywhere near a decent living. I am at present in a position where almost 

 every month of the year I have applications made to me for young men to 

 assist large farmers and owners of large farms, in managing their business 

 either to take entire supervision, brain and muscle combined, having been 

 trained with a combination of practice and science, to take charge of large 

 estates, or to assist the owners in their work. I am not able to find one 

 young man for ten applications. There is an opening for well educated 

 young farmers. I don't know of any occupation, unless it is the highest 

 skilled mechanics, that to-day promises so well to young men to fit them- 

 selves, even at expense, even if they have to borrow money to doit as in the 

 progressive agriculture of the United States. 



The gentleman has alluded to declamation and gestures in connection with 

 a farmer's life. My humble opinion is, that if the rising generation of far- 

 mers will learn and exercise the powers of declamation and put a good deal 

 of emphatic gesture into their speech and their work, then the farming inter- 

 ests of this country will receive better recognition at the hands of the powers 

 that be than they will otherwise. It is time to have declamation. 



Mr Reed : I wish to make a criticism on Mr. Hall's paper and have two 

 corrections made before it gets into the record. He alludes to the higher 

 plane m education of the classics and higher professions. I claim that agri- 

 culture is just as high as any other. And another one : He said a poor 

 doctor made a good farmer. It takes the best man to make the farmer. 



THE EDUCATIONAL POWER OP CONVENTIONS. 



BY C. F. DEXTER, OF CHICAGO. 



The primitive man lived in caves and holes in the ground, and fought for 

 the poor privilege of existence with wild beasts and his fellow men, his sole 

 weapon of defense and attack, a club. 



The Darwinian theory of the survival of the fittest must have meant in 

 that age the survival of the toughest— the supremacy of muscle. But even 



