Marcs, 1912.] 



259 



Miscellaneous. 



The gravity of the situation is 

 augmented by the fact that the agri- 

 cultural and business interests of the 

 country, alive to the value of our worth, 

 are now proposing to us what we shall 

 do and are urging upon us not only 

 efforts of our own, but our active sup- 

 port of new efforts that are outside our 

 province, but to which we are expected 

 to sustain relations of advice and aid. 

 These suggestions, which sometimes are 

 almost equivalent to demands, are cer- 

 tainly made in the spirit of good will 

 and helpfulness and are always worthy 

 of our most respectful and careful con- 

 sideration, but it is seriously to be 

 doubted whether popular conceptions 

 of the aims and methods of education 

 and inquiry are a safe basis on which 

 to establish the policy that shall domi- 

 nate the work and influence of either 

 the college or station. 



The chief reason that will here be 

 advanced for directing the means and 

 energy of the land-grant colleges along 

 the higher ranges of educational effort 

 is that under the conditions now exist- 

 ing these institutions will most fully 

 promote public welfare by devoting 

 their resources mainly to preparing men 

 and women for leadership. Our social 

 and vocational future is largely a matter 

 of leadership. He ia widely Utopian 

 who prophesies a day when all the 

 people or even a majority, will possess 

 the knowledge and ability necessary to 

 wise discrimination in civic and econo- 

 mic affairs. It is equally fanciful to 

 hope that any large proportion of actual 

 farmers will ever be college-trained. 

 Secondary education must serve the 

 needs of the great majority of the occu- 

 pants of the land. In the past the 

 reaction of the agricultural college upon 

 public welfare has been largely through 

 men who have become investigators, 

 teachers, publicists and managers of 

 large agricultural enterprises rather 

 than through the distribution of practi- 

 cal farmers. 



What has been true of the past seems 

 likely to be increasingly the experience 

 of the future, and this fact in no way 

 minimizes the value of the college in 

 agricultural affairs. We ignore the 

 teachings of all human experience if 

 we look for the time when the destinies 

 of the nation and the interests of agri- 

 cultural or of any vocation will not be 

 safeguarded by a small minority of 

 citizens whose training has placed them 

 outside the domination of dangerous 

 sentiment and ignorant prejudice and 

 who possess that power of discrimination 

 derived from a knowledge of fundamen- 

 tal principles! without which we may 



not expect an intelligent and judicial 

 consideration of either vocational or 

 public questions. 



Not only are we greatly dependent 

 upon wise leadership in both social and 

 industrial affairs, but with the college 

 lies the opportunity for its develop- 

 ment. It is among the young men and 

 women who seek the advantages of 

 college instruction that we find those 

 who, because of ambition and capacity, 

 constitute material with the largest 

 possibilities of future usefulness. If the 

 college fails in wisely moulding these 

 plastic minds it fails to fully occupy its 

 one great opportunity, and if, on the 

 other hand, the training given is in- 

 adequate or unbalanced or in any way 

 less effective than is reasonably possible, 

 both the receptive student and the 

 public are defrauded and suffer a loss 

 that can scarcely be made good. 



Not all college graduates will be 

 leaders, and not all leaders will possess 

 a college degree ; but it is a fact worthy 

 of emphasis that the opportunity of the 

 college is with the few and not with the 

 many. Only a very small proportion 

 (perhaps one or two in a hundred) of any 

 generation of men and women will come 

 into extended contact with college life, 

 and these few will be the medium 

 through which the college will render 

 its largest and most effective service. 

 The college can never come into efficient 

 touch with the many as it does with 

 the few. Whatever direct influence it 

 secures over the general public lacks 

 concentration and continuity; in fact, 

 is diffuse and indefinite. Experience and 

 observation show that a discouraging 

 proportion of the minds reached by the 

 attempts at popular instruction are 

 either irresponsive or incapable and the 

 constructive value of these efforts is not 

 to be compared with the life-long ex- 

 ample and influence of those who are 

 adequately trained for social and in- 

 dustrial leadership. 



There are those, doubtless, who believe 

 that these institutions supported by 

 public funds, should stand in especially 

 close relation to the people and that in 

 order to do the work for which they 

 were organized they should establish a 

 low grade of admission, occupy a 

 secondary place in our educational 

 scheme, adhere closely to instruction 

 of an ultra-vocational character and 

 engage extensively in agricultural pro- 

 paganda, leaving to the older colleges 

 and universities the severer training 

 that is required in preparing men and 

 women for the higher ranges of thought 

 and activity. It is to be hoped that if 

 we have in any measure adopted this 



