CHAPTER XXXIII.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF HON. W. C. FLAGG.

PARENTAGE AND EDUCATION.

Willard Cutting Flagg was born September 16, 1829, on the farm where he now resides, in what was then known as Paddock's Settlement, Madison County, Illinois. He is the son of Gershom Flagg and Jane Paddock, both natives of, and early emigrants from, Vermont.

Attending the local school and doing the usual work of a farmer's boy until 1844, he thereafter spent the winters at a first-class English and classical high-school in St. Louis, Missouri, until 1850, when he entered Yale College as freshman, graduating in course in 1854, and taking the rank of an oration man" in scholarship. He was awarded two prizes in English Composition in the sophomore year. In the junior year he took the Yale Literary Gold Medal for English Composition, and was chosen one of the five editors of the Yale Literary Magazine for senior year.

After graduating, he returned home and commenced work upon the farm, continuing, however, to intersperse a good deal of reading and some magazine writing with his labors. On the 13th of February, 1856, he married Miss Sarah Smith, of St. Louis, Missouri. Entering into the political canvass of that year, in support of Fremont and the Re

publican ticket, he wrote earnestly for the political press. In 1857, after the death of his father, he devoted himself exclusively to farming, and in 1858 and succeeding years, besides building, planting, and fencing fields, old and new, he commenced orchard planting. During the next ten years, he planted about one hundred acres of orchard, principally apple, but also comprising a good many peach and other fruit trees, besides a pretty extensive collection of experimental varieties of nearly all sorts of fruits.

CONNECTION WITH ILLINOIS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY.

In 1860, as a member of the Republican State Central Committee and the County Committee, he took an active part in politics, and wrote some political pamphlets.

In 1861 he was elected Secretary of the Illinois State Horticultural Society, a position which he held until 1869, bringing to this position an untiring industry, and a large and varied experience. The volumes of that society attracted the attention of horticulturists all over the country. In this position he continued until 1869, most of the time serving without compensation, when the Society most reluctantly accepted his resignation, and, in appreciation of his earnest and self-sacrificing labors in its behalf, unanimously elected him their President for 1871.

In 1862, Mr. Flagg introduced into Madison County, Illinois, a herd of Devon cattle, having previously bred grades of this stock, and now has a herd of about twenty "pure bred," besides grades. The same year he was appointed United States Collector of the Twelfth District of Illinois, a position which he held until January, 1869, when he resigned it in order to take his seat in the State Senate, to

LEGISLATIVE CAREER.

385

which he was elected from the counties of Madison and St. Clair, in 1868.

In 1864, he published a pamphlet on the Agricultural College question, then beginning to awaken a renewed interest in our State, and joined with other friends of the movement in opposing the attempt to divide the agricultural and mechanical grant between the existing colleges.

In 1867, he was appointed one of the first Board of Trustees of the Illinois Industrial University, and elected Corresponding Secretary of the Board, a position which he has held since that time.

LEGISLATIVE CAREER.

In 1868, Mr. Flagg was nominated and elected State Senator from the counties of Madison and St. Clair, and served in the sessions of 1869 and 1871, the special sessions of 1871 and the adjourned session of 1872, during which period he had an opportunity, in connection with his fellow-members from that locality, of breaking down the Wiggins' Ferry monopoly at East St. Louis. He voted, though unsuccessfully, against the infamous Lake Front Bill and the "Grab Law" of 1869, by which the railroads combined to rob Chicago of her frontage to Lake Michigan.

In the session of 1871, as Chairman of the Committee on Education, he reported a revision of the school law, and introduced the clause for the study of the elements of the natural sciences as a requirement in the qualification of teachers, and as a possible study for pupils. In both sessions his attention was called to the railway question. His opinions on the subject are briefly expressed in an address before the literary societies of Shurtleff College, in June, 1869.

"The association of capital in this country," said Mr.

Flagg, "as well as others, is going on rapidly in partial opposition to the organization of labor, and often with bad effects on the State. Capital, in the hands of a few, is organized with facility, handled rapidly, and used unscrupulously. It may do more mischief in a democracy than elsewhere in corrupting persons in power. 'In democracies,' said De Tocqueville, 'statesmen are poor, and have their fortunes to make.' It is inimical to the virtue of a democracy in aggregating wealth in the hands of men who are uneducated, immoral, and extravagant; who bring upon us the vices and corrupting influences of an aristocracy, without its culture or its vices.

"These evils, though general in the case of associated capital, are more peculiarly and specially the result of our railway corporations. They ask, and often by fraud obtain, unwarrantable franchises. They are unscrupulous in extortion when they have the opportunity, and truckling under competition; they consolidate and water stock, and compel the traveling public to pay twenty-five per cent on the real capital under the guise of eight or ten on the nominal capital; they violate even the rule of honor among thieves, and stockholder cheats stockholder in the election of directors to get control of the management."

In an address on "Our Railways and Our Farmers," delivered before the Pike County, Illinois, Farmers' Convention, in 1872, these views were elaborated and supplemented with other matter.

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION FROM A SCHOLAR'S
STAND-POINT.

In 1870, in an address on "the Education of the Farmer," before the St. Clair County, Illinois, Farmers' and Fruit

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION.

387

Growers' Association, he gave his views upon agricultural education, taking the ground, in common with other practical minds "that the young men most earnest in getting an education, although farmers' sons, look forward to other pursuits than farming as the goal of their desires. These are evidently neither of them necessary results; but they must affect our theory and practice of agricultural educa

tion.

"Those of us who have gone through the prescribed drill of our college courses have generally formed the habit of getting our knowledge by the study of text-books, rather than by original research, or even by the accurate observation of things. We have formed sedentary habits. We would rather read up Allen on the 'points' of the shorthorn than go to the field and examine the animal. In other words, whilst the farmer's is an active and practical life, we have been educated to, and formed the habits of, a literary and sedentary life.

"The education of the farmer, and probably that of all men engaged in active pursuits, should be conducted with a view to avoid it. So far as possible, text-books should be used mainly for reference, and object-teaching' substituted. Botany should be studied by dissection of the plant in the class-room, or by rambles in the fields and forests. Chemistry should be taught, as it now is getting to be, by immediate resort to the laboratory. If breeds of animals be the topic, the lecturer should have them at hand, and take his class to study their points; if pruning, the students should go to the orchard and see the work done, and help do it; if varieties of fruit, the fruit itself, or casts of it, should be at hand, and the tree that bears them in the experimental or specimen orchard."