even more important than the other, was that the proportions and quantities of the ingredients taken up by the crop are so variable and so different under differing circumstances that nothing less than a careful and scientific study of soils will enable one to restore those ingredients in the most efficient and economical proportions. It was accordingly held that for the encouragement of such studies, schools of agriculture must be multiplied.

And from that day to this the number as well as the efficiency of the schools has steadily increased. Prussia alone has four higher · agricultural colleges with some eighty professorships; she has more than forty lesser schools, all having model farms; she has five special schools for the cultivation of meadows and the scientific study of methods of irrigation; she has one special school for the teaching of those who desire to reclaim swamp lands; she has two special schools for teaching the growing of fruit trees in industrial nurseries; she has a school for teaching horse-shoeing; one for teaching silk raising; one for the raising of bees; and one for teaching the cultivating of fish. Besides all these she has twenty special schools for the education of gardeners; and fifteen schools for the training of those who are to cultivate the grape.

The example of Prussia has been imitated by the other German states. The little Kingdom of Bavaria, scarcely larger than Massachusetts, has twenty-six agricultural colleges, besides more than two hundred agricultural associations. Würtemberg, still smaller in area, has sixteen colleges, and seventy-six associations. Baden, with a population of only a million, has fourteen agricultural colleges besides four schools of gardening and forestry. Saxony, with its dense population of two millions compacted into a space hardly larger than two American counties, has four higher colleges and twenty agricultural schools besides a veterinary college, and a department of agriculture of twenty professors at the University of Leipsic. Saxe Weimar, with a population of no more than 230,000 souls has three agricultural colleges besides an agricultural department with fifteen professorships at the University of Jena.

And what has been the result? Simply this, that while in every one of the American states, as is shown by the agricultural reports, the average crop per acre has been steadily growing less and less,*

*Authority for this statement may be found in the Report of the Commission of Agriculture for the year 1886, p. 19. It is there shown that the average yield of the leading cereals, between 1870 and 1879 was considerably greater than that from 1879 to 1885. The diminution is shown by the following figures: The average corn crop declined from 26.8 to 25.1 bushels per acre; Wheat, from 12.5 to 12.1; Oats, from 27.5 to 27.2; Rye, from 14.2 to 12.8; Barley, from 22.4 to 22.08; and Buckwheat, from 17.5 to 13.6.

the average crop in Germany has been as steadily growing more and more. In view of these facts, we ought to how our heads in humility if not in shame. At least let us cease our unwarranted boasting about the superiority of our educational facilities.

Such have been the tendencies in other parts of the world, and I trust that you will now agree with me in thinking that the Morrill Grant in purpose and in aim was in harmony with the general spirit and the best tendencies of the times.

The third part of my thesis is the proposition that this land grant was fraught with the means of incalculable advantage to the nation.

I am willing to concede that in many cases the avails of the grant were not so large as they should have been. If it were necessary, I

would admit that in some instances there was a conflict between private and public interests and that in consequence there was a culpable misuse of the funds; I say "if it were necessary," for I am not aware that any such instances are clearly established.

But if there were even general misuse of the funds, would the fact prove that the grant was unwise? Because there is misuse and extravagance in the building of Post Offices and Custom Houses, do we say that the building of such structures should cease? Do we argue that because there are fraudulent contracts for carrying the mails, therefore contracts for the further carrying of the mails should cease? Do we say that because there are frauds in elections therefore no elections shall be held? No! a thousand times no! We contemplate the good we receive, we determine to prevent the recurrence of abuses in the future, and then we demand those appropriations which the greatest good of the people requires. And so must it be in judging of this great measure.

And now having said so much, I wish to allude to one fact that prevented the large returns from the grant that were anticipated. A majority of the states had no government lands within their borders subject to location under the bill. The consequence was that most of the states were obliged to sell the government scrip at whatever price it would bring. The market was flooded with scrip, and the states found themselves confronted with this dilemma. Either they must sell the scrip at the contemptible price of thirty or fifty cents per acre, or they must postpone the establishment and development of the college. It is not easy perhaps to decide which in this alternative was the wiser course to pursue; certain it is that when the states sold the scrip at a low price they practically gave back to the

people in the way of profit on the lands a large share of what Congress had in the first instance intended for the colleges. It follows that whatever the states lost in selling upon a low market, the people gained in buying, and are in equity through Congress under obligations to restore. Fortunate were those states which, although obliged to sell the scrip, found buyers who were willing to locate the lands and give proper guaranty to turn over the profits to the college established.

But notwithstanding the difficulties in the way of realizing the full value of the Grant, no one, I imagine will have the hardihood to deny that a great, an immense good has been accomplished. Look at a few of the facts and figures. The Land Grant amounted to 17,430,000 acres. The sum realized from the sale of this scrip is reported to have been $7,545,405.. This sum has been greatly increased by additions of grounds, buildings, apparatus, and money given by benevolent individuals. In this way the land scrip fund, which in New York amounted to scarcely more than $600,000, has been augmented to not less than about $6,000,000. Though the university to which I refer has, perhaps, been the most fortunate of the land grant institutions, gifts with a similar purpose have likewise increased the endowments in other States. The result is that the latest reports show that these colleges now employ nearly five hundred professors and teachers, and give instruction to some five thousand students. Many of these students have, in turn, become teachers in other schools and colleges. From the institution with which I have the honor to be connected, I recall the names of at least twelve of the graduates who have become professors of some branch of Agriculture in other schools of collegiate grade. In a similar way, the other land grant colleges are disseminating knowledge on those great subjects which were especially named in the bill.

But this, of course, has been but a small part of the work. Thousands of young men, educated in the various branches of Agriculture and Mechanical Science, have gone forth to engage in the practical duties of life, and thus have disseminated and multiplied the knowledge they have received. The work is to go on with ever accelerating vigor, and thus there will be sent out a continued succession for all future time.

There is another feature of the benefits received from this great measure that ought not to be overlooked. I refer to the fact that centres of agricultural knowledge have been established in all the

States of the Union. The science of agriculture, before almost absolutely unknown by the masses of the people has come to be in some measure at last respected and even honored. The agricultural necessities of the country have been made more apparent. To some thousands of young men the stupendous fact is now taught that nature will not be cheated of her rights, and that for everything you take out of the soil, you must put something back, or the time will come when nature's cashier will cease to honor your drafts, and you will end in bankruptcy.

And what a field for such teaching there is; look at the statistics of our Agricultural Department. In every one of the States, in the North, in the South, in the East and even in the West, the yield per acre of all the great cereal crops has been steadily declining since the early years of the Century. The American farmer has impoverished the soil,—and then gone West. It is not certain that this process has even yet been arrested. The last statistics available for general comparison are not very reassuring. If the New England States have held their own, it has not been by means of improved agriculture, but by the general establishment of manufactories. The same process has been going on that converted many of the fertile lands of Virginia into pine barrens. As we all know too well thousands of acres in the Eastern States have been abandoned as practically worthless. Meanwhile the streams of immigration and emigration have been going on. The Irish and the Germans have come to Massachusetts; but the farmers of Massachusetts have gone to New York and Ohio, the people of New York and Ohio have gone to Indiana and Illinois, and the people of Indiana and Illinois have gone to Kansas and the farther West. Ever westward has been the movement until the current has been arrested on the slopes of the Pacific. At length there is no West, to whose virgin soil we may flee. Our farmers no longer have the choice between remaining poor or moving toward the setting sun; they have the other alternative, the one which has long confronted the farmers of, the old world, remaining poor or a more perfect knowledge of the conditions under which nature will yield a bounteous and profitable return.

Then look at another fact. In many regions of our country the same desolating process is going on that has reduced the fertile fields about the Mediterranean to sterile deserts. The trees are being swept away and thus we attempt to frustrate the methods by which an all wise Providence designed that the moisture in the deep soil

should be taken up into the plant and cast off into the clouds to be returned again as rain. What has been the result? The rainfall has been diminished, the showers which heaven still does not refuse to furnish, instead of being welcomed by the soft verdure of forests and cultivated fields and lovingly kept in the soil for the good of all animal and plant life, is repelled by parched hill sides, so that it shoots off in angry torrents and is soon once more in the lakes and the great rivers and the oceans beyond. Thus by a perfectly explicable method our climate is undergoing a change and it is the change which in some of the regions of the old world has caused the sands to drift over regions that were once the homes of a prosperous people.

And yet however great the difficulties may seem, there is no tendency of nature that is more amenable to the influence of man's appreciative intelligence. Everybody remembers Emerson's allusion to the ability of the English by the planting of trees on the borders of Egypt to bring rain again after a drought of three thousand years. We have been doing the same thing in the West; for the planting of trees and cornfields in Kansas and Nebraska up to the very frontier has already pushed the rain-line further west by more than a hundred miles. The Reports of the Commissioner of Agriculture are teeming with facts of similar significance. It is estimated, for example, that the loss from the swine plague alone reaches annually some thirty millions of dollars, and that the value of corn and wheat annually destroyed by fungi is not less than the enormous sum of two hundred millions.*

These are some of the lessons and some of the necessities that are taught by experience; and yet they are only hints, as it were, designed to show how vast is the domain that invites the careful study of our schools and colleges. It is into this domain that the people were invited by the wise Land Grant of 1862. It is in this domain that the colleges and universities founded on that grant, if they live up to their high behest, will accomplish results that shall be for the helping, if not for the healing of the nation.

*Report of Commissioner of Agriculture for 1886, pp. 11, 24.