AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 
395 
ing any wide spread public interest, such as has been seen in con¬ 
nection with this industrial education movement, there is ever to 
be a real need and the possibility of supplying that need, but these 
institutions have not been failures. They have done good work; 
are now doing more than ever before; and it is not an unreasoning 
faith which looks with confidence to their steady growth into a 
more and more full accomplishment of their work. 
What that work is, is a question of interpretation of the laws 
under which these institutions were founded. It is not a question 
of what might have been or of what ought to have been enacted, 
but of what was provided for by the law, and of what ought to be 
done under these provisions. The act of congress by which 480,- 
000 acres of public lands were granted to this state, provided that 
the leading object of the institution established under this endow¬ 
ment, should be, without excluding other scientific and classical 
studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of 
learning as related to agriculture and the mechanical arts, in order 
to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial 
classes in the several pursuits and professions of life. 
The words of the law under which the University was organized 
show that this institution was designed to be, and must be, a school 
in which branches of learning are to be taught, and not simply and 
only a collection of farms and workshops in which the manual labor 
of the farmer and mechanic is shown and practiced. They show 
also, and equally clearly, that the teaching is to have a definite ob¬ 
ject, and that this institution is not to be an exact copy of other 
and older schools, of which there was no lack. They show also 
that this is not an agricultural school alone; the mechanic arts are 
placed by the side of agriculture as its equal. 
While there are those who expect too much from these schools, 
there are many who have no faith in them, so far as their being a 
help to agriculture is concerned. These men lay great stress on 
so called practical knowledge. And this is not unnatural. We 
naturally prefer the lessons learned by our own experience. We 
remember them, and often practice them. Our own little discov¬ 
eries seem marvelously great in our eyes. But in farming, as in 
any calling, all but the simple or the exceedingly egotistical soon 
learn that life is too short and our intellects too weak for any of us 
to undertake to work out, unaided, all the problems we meet. We 
