State Convention—Self-Culture. 
417 
EDUCATE themselves. 
Self-culture is the one thing needful. 
Self-culture is the knife that must cut the gordian-knot that binds 
them slaves to selfish capital and a host of political demagogues. 
Self-culture will enable them to govern the railroad kings and 
solve the questions of cheap transportation. It will properly care 
for our “ rag-babjv' Yes, and an intelligent, moral, and self-think-’ 
ing people will then u discover some way in which it will be possi¬ 
ble (not) to educate," but to eradicate those who now live and fat¬ 
ten upon the laboring farmer and sneeringly term these conventions 
“ hay-seed humbugs,” and other pet expressions so freely indulged 
in by the professional blackguardism of some of the daily press, 
who term themselves the leaders of public opinion, but who really 
are but the tools of corruptionists and the ready servants of money- 
brokers. 
How often we hear men whining about “ what might have 
been,” were they only educated. Such men remind me of the 
man who sat down on a stump in the middle of a forty-acre lot and 
awaited the coming of the cows to be milked. He waited, but got 
no milk. These men may whine and whine, but will make no pro¬ 
gress. They lack the mainspring of progress—energy and resolu¬ 
tion. Their mental powers lie dormant and know not their 
strength. 
This is especially the case with our average farmers. Their men¬ 
tal powers become weak and torpid for want of exercise. They 
have so long been told that physical labor and mental exercise can 
not harmonize that they believe it to be so. They believe their in¬ 
active mentality to be the result of physical labor, while the truth 
is, at least with a large majority, it is simply the lack of mental 
exercise. “ Keep the body in health, and the brain will take care 
of itself; work it all you can,” yes, the more you work it the 
stronger it becomes. What is education? Various may be the 
answers, but to me practical education is simply a knowledge con¬ 
cerning ourselves and our relation to the world in which we, are 
destined to live and act. The training to habits of action suitable 
to that distinction. No college-walls will give you this, and no 
professor can create a single idea for you, nor fill an empty * t pate” 
with the thoughts of a Milton or Webster. You must use the 
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