54 
WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
The introduction of science into the schools of the country has 
brought with it another element, also new to colleges. It is the 
demand for practical education. Not only must science be taught, 
but it must be so taught as to aid men whom the old education 
did not reach. The farmer, the engineer, the miner, the machin¬ 
ist and the manufacturer, all need the assistance it can render. 
They are all dealing with science, nature’s laws, and for them the 
demand has come for practical education. Science, then, has her 
devotees in investigators who only seek new laws, and in men who 
utilize these laws by applying them in practice, or as a rhymer 
has well expressed it: 
“To some she is the Goddess great; 
To some the milch cow of the field. 
Their business is to calculate 
The butter she will yield.” 
There are then three elements in a college course of instruction 
where the new educational system is followed. 
1st. The classical, which no true lover of education would wish 
to see abolished. 
2d. Pure science, which teaches general laws and scientific meth¬ 
ods, and 
3d. Practical education, in which the applications of science to 
all branches of human industry are taught. 
The movement in practical education began just at the close of 
the last century, in the manual labor schools of Germany and 
Switzerland. But it is only within the last thirty years that much 
progress has been made in industrial education. 
Liebig gave the great impulse to agricultural science, and the 
application of science to other arts may doubtless be regarded 
largely as an indirect growth from his investigations, and applica¬ 
tions of science to this all important industry. In our own coun¬ 
try, the movement for industrial education was made by the gov¬ 
ernment in the liberal donation of lands to “provide colleges for 
the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts.” 
This grant has been accepted by the majority of states, and 
there are now thirty-seven agricultural and technical schools, and 
departments, organized under the law of congress, and receiving 
aid from the congressional endowment. Besides these, there are 
