Let us, in imitation of Christ, be true. His prayer for us to the Father was: "That they be sanctified thru truth." The intellectual grasp of the truth will not suffice unto full sanctification; there must be, too, the grasp of truth by the heart, the active union of the heart with truth. But so potent is truth, that, once thoroly possessed by the mind, it easily makes its way into the heart-"The truth will make ye free." It might be said that Christ's words bore more directly on such truth as reveals immediately divine life in the soul; I fear not to say, they bore on all truth; for all form of truth is akin to every other form, the spirit of one being that of the other, the essence of all being the eternal prototype in the divine entity itself. Moreover, the soul attuned to truth in any form will pursue it under all forms; and, even if after due labor it reaches not unto all truth, it will at least be in its affections truth-like and worthy to possess all truth in heaven. Let truth be in smallest pebble, in tiniest herb, in mightiest star, on earth or in the firmament, or in the highest heavens above earth and firmament; it is everywhere divine, it is Godlike, and God-like who seek it, know it, and love it.

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN FARMER HON. JAMES WILSON, UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE, WASHINGTON, D. C.

I bring to you today the cause of the farmers of our country-the creators of wealth, the foundation on which society rests; the conservative class that work in the sunlight thru long days, keep level heads when others are excited, pay taxes, and reinforce all other classes when they wear out. Our country has grown great among the peoples of the earth because of industrial activity brought about by the high average intelligence of Americans.

The world has never seen such vigorous competition for commercial supremacy as exists at the present time. The teacher is called upon to strengthen commercial lines, so that the highest intelligence shall guide. and direct the movement and interchange of commodities. The manufacturer has come to the front in competition with the world and challenges the position of artisans, long masters of the secrets of changing raw materials into products of skill.

The teacher is helping to prepare the manufacturer for this world's contest, and millions are being given by philanthropists to endow technological institutions to train the man who works in the shop. We have the best system of transportation in all respects of any people. The companies educate their men by precept and example, applying every scientific discovery and invention and the results of all experience and observation to the carrying of freight and passengers. The railroad

man is a specialist of the strictest order, and learns how to do things by doing them, taking nothing for granted into which he can inquire, nor resting satisfied with anything he can improve. The teacher intervenes in this great industry to furnish forth the experts who direct these great systems that shorten time and space and contribute so much to our success and comfort. This may be said of our people in all the different lines of activity in which they are engaged-they are educated toward their life-work.

Our earliest colleges were organized to teach theologians; the oldest schools were instituted to teach the people to read, write, and cipher. Both college and school have extended their courses of study, but neither has greatly extended the original purpose of its creation.

Our common-school system has so long been the best devised by man that the average intelligence of our people is much higher than any other. Our school system reaches all the people, our colleges educate the few. We have adopted much in our systems of education from peoples who have not our responsibilities, peoples who educate men of leisure, fashion, class, privilege, caste, birth, and all that. The people govern here. They should be educated with a view to their development along the lines of their life-work, whatever that may be.

The problem of educating the producers of wealth presents itself with much force at the present time. The world is small, and its ends seem to come nearer together as invention and enterprise shorten travel and the cost of it, bringing into active competition in the race of life the workers in the fields of all lands.

What can be done for our producers that they may live on higher levels of comfort and happiness, that they may help the weary hand with a better-trained head, and have more time to devote to intellectual, moral, and spiritual life, is the previous question which the educators of the great producing states of our country are called upon to answer.

The four-year college course does not begin soon enough, nor continue long enough, to meet the requirements of our day in this regard. Teachers are wanted in primary and secondary schools and in post-graduate work in the university. They are wanted to do work that has not been done in all the ages, the discovery of truths underlying production and their application to the farm.

Let us see how our professional men and our best equipped educators are prepared for their life-work. They attend primary, graded, and training schools until they are fitted for college; after the bachelor's degree is wrested from the faculty with much tribulation and some vexation of spirit on both sides, post-graduate work at home or abroad for the future teacher is the common road to be traveled. The professional enters upon special study, longer or shorter, and finally teacher and professional begin practice on people's minds, or bodies, or souls, or teeth,

or misunderstandings, as the case may be. Our educated men travel this road-nearly all of them; it is a long study from youth to early manhood or womanhood, without intermission—this preparing for professional life-work. It answers a good purpose; it is perfected for those who need it, but it is not sufficient for the farmer.

There are self-made men who become strong in certain lines without university training, but rarely in more than one line. The West nurtured many of these unique characters thru its vigorous ways of object-lesson teaching, but western conditions are changing. The prairie grass, the wild flowers, the fierce winds and bad roads, the privations, and the neighborliness among the people are going with the grand men and women they inspired; and, with them, much self-reliance and individuality.

I would not advise young people to avoid our regular channels of learning and depend upon self-development. They would graduate late in life. The education of the youth who is to work in the fields, grow plants, and rear animals cannot be pursued as the professional prepares for future usefulness. He attends the district school, secondary schools, or the upper grades of our high schools; but they lead to literary or professional studies. Is there a way by which we can enrich primary education with agricultural studies, so that the farmers' boys and girls may have their vision strengthened to see, on clear days, the delectable mountains of an educated farmer's life, towering in the distance as high as other elevations?

The most useful and valuable educational work in all the world appealing to the educator is that of the farmers of the country. Pioneer work along this line is waiting. The organization of faculties to do the work; apparatus, laboratories, text-books, illustrative material from primary to post-graduate and beyond, where studies of specialities must be combined, where research must be broadened, and where specialists. must be grouped to reach a desired end and meet the pressing demands of producers - all these are waiting. This is the great field of applied science, where the grower seeks the help of the scholar, of the experimenter, and of the observer. The millions of farmers look to you for help in these directions.

The learned professions, so-called, with commerce, manufacturing, transportation, mining, lumbering and the like, have invited young men. to neglect the study of the sciences that relate to production; but education has been overdone in several of those lines, and the supply exceeds the demand. The average mechanic earns more than the average professional. The farmers are being educated, but the studies that are offered by most educational institutions are not what the producer from the soil requires. He goes to the warehouse to buy, and must be contented with what he can get. His interests require him to prepare himself for doing one thing, and his training prepares him to do another; he needs

garments to answer in one kind of work and finds little or nothing for sale in his line, so he puts on what is designed for something different or designed for mere show. The acquirements of literary and professional men would be only ornamental to the farmer if he acquires nothing else. They are more ornamental than useful to many who rejoice in them in our day. There is a pernicious idea abroad among old-time educators. that one educational system is a sufficient foundation for future usefulness in all walks of life, and specialization should take place only after that foundation is laid. We find, in preparing scientists for our work in the Department of Agriculture, that no one specialty is sufficient for him whose life-work it is to study soils and their composition, climate and its effects, moisture and its potentialities, animals and their uses, insect enemies and friends, the microscopic plants and animals and their influences, the economic growth and disposition of crops, and the like. These are all specialties, to the study of each of which a scientist might devote a lifetime, but concerning which the farmer should have thoro information to manage his affairs intelligently. Life is too short to make acquaintance with these sciences after going thru primary schools, secondary schools, and colleges, and attaining manhood with no knowledge of them. Their study should begin with the primary and continue thru life; then the country will have farmers who will get response from the soil.

To bring this about, to organize, inspire, and develop the farmer for his work when necessity calls upon him to assume its burden, is the work of the educator, and you should begin with the child in the primary school; and that you may do this, the state should give you facilities to prepare for this work.

The Department of Agriculture is educating 260 young men and women in these sciences at the present time, because the colleges and universities have not trained them in the sciences relating to agriculture. Our scientists should devote their time to research in co-operation with state institutions, and this they do as far as practicable in every state and territory and in the isles of the sea under our flag, but we must educate assistants in all lines. I find fault with no system of education in operation for the benefit of any class of men. I assert that systems in vogue are not suitable for farmers, because they do nothing, comparatively, to make them use their heads to help their hands when the hands must lift the burden. I am not content to have the husbandman ignorant of the truths of nature; I am not content to have the American farmer remain as ignorant of the sciences that relate to his lifework as the European farmers are; I protest against conditions continuing that give grounds for tracing relationship between the farmer and the ox. A thoro study of applied science and modern languages will develop the mind sufficiently for all practical purposes. You will find that the student will acquire any

modern language that will help him in the discovery of truth written in a foreign vernacular, and it will be the same with regard to other studies that will help the toiler in the field; but let the necessity for every acquirement be apparent before the pupil is required to engage in it. The man who lives by the soil will only devote time to acquiring the useful.

The highest aim of the educator should be to educate the people, and all of them, along lines of greatest usefulness to them and the commonwealth. The farm is the fallow ground, the neglected outfield, the unworked claim, the promising subject that will yield the best returns on the investment.

I speak of the class that cannot afford an ornamental education and will not have it. In the methods of all farm operations we are in the lead of foreign farmers, thru the efforts of the farmers themselves to learn of their own affairs as best they may. We are taking the lead in research after scientific truth, and have no veneration for the borrowed educational systems of the old world. Our American carriers excel, our American mechanics excel, our American miners excel, our American manufacturers excel, our systems of government excel. Why should not our systems of education excel also, especially for the creators of wealth, who never have had a university adapted to their wants, nor even a college, until within the memory of men still in the prime of manhood?

Foreign countries are looking to the United States for educators along these lines. Owners of land properties are inquiring for trained agriculturists at home and abroad.. The state colleges and experiment stations inquire for masters in agricultural science to teach and investigate. Every farm that is being robbed of plant food is crying aloud for better treatment. The vanishing forests distress us with their dying wails, drouth-stricken fields admonish us, inferior animals advertise that the farmer's education has been overlooked. The United States Department of Agriculture, the agricultural colleges, the state experiment stations, the high schools of agriculture, agricultural societies, the agricultural press, authors of books on agriculture-all require help in higher education, while the specialist needs facilities to expand into kindred specialties to fit himself for doing some simple thing that has never been. done before, to help some producer in wresting from nature some truth that has been hidden in all the past.

The American people always find the right man to meet the emergency. We want a man now to organize the education of half the people under our flag, who till the soil and furnish 65 per cent. of our exports, who create the wealth of the country from materials found in earth and air and water; we want organization from the primary school to the university and beyond, into fields where things grow; into the stable