ment of self-government will end in your law-makers taking your place. The intelligent ultimate decision of policies belongs to the sovereign citizenship, and when a people lose it or demit it, that moment the office of sovereign citizenship is over. And herein is suggested some portion of what it is to be a citizen- at least in Wisconsin in our day. The tariff, the proper protection and restraint of labor and the protection and proper restraint of capltal, provision and enforcement of popular education, railroad legislation, crime and its punishment, public charities, religious competitions which are looming above the horizon, the Indian question, Sabbath allowances, the saloon with its infamies and nefarious crimes, divorce, municipal government, corporations, are a tithe only of the questions American citizens are charged with the ultimate decision of, while engaged on their farms, in their workshops and stores and in the routine of other occupations, intelligent acquaintance with which to be without is no more proper for them than to leave the plow in the unfinished furrow or the wheat uncut against the autumn rains. I seriously apprehend that we are hardly yet alive to what it means to be an American citizen, now after the war has been fought for the union, and we are fairly started on the problem of making a nation such as a nation ought to be. And with the ability to decide such questions - we able and our children able - let us add: At all times and in all places to be so masters of ourselves as to present, accordingly, a steady front of action on the line of all good interests, political and moral, of nation and city and neighborhood and home. If the words of the pagan poet, have awakened a response in all ages in the heart of the patriot, "It is honorable to die for one's country," to live for fatherland, in the intelligent support of its industries, its peace, its good government and its equal laws in order that they may be a defence and a pillar of support to all classes alike, of its individual virtue at home and its virtue in the intercourse of nations abroad-in short, to bear in the membership of the national life, equal responsibilities of counsel and action for the highest common welfare-though it is far

more difficult, is far more a practical claim upon us in our day. I do not say that all are equally endowed for the best performance of such duties, but there is not a man between the oceans who should not deem himself charged with such responsibilities, and take all opportunities that they may be realized in himself, and in his children and his children's children. Valuing, as I do, the privilege of taking a place as a citizen among citizens in this struggle of deed and word, I say to each of you, gentlemen, that of all the men who deem themselves unequal to the responsibilities of such a citizenship or for any reason are willing to forego it, it is only worthy of yourself and your children to take solemn oath that you will be the last.

One question further that I have to ask: what kind of education do the farmers of Wisconsin and their children need to fit them for such an office? I think there will be no difference between us as to its being one that will enable them to go to the bottom of great questions and settle most complicated problems. Does this mean considerable acquaintance with the mistaken answers to similar questions and the inadequate solution of similar problems hitherto? Does it mean the power to look upon a subject on many sides and in relation to many modifying circumstances? Does it mean to fairly comprehend and reconcile a multitude of conflicting interests in determining political or social adjustment. Then, does it mean fulness of mind, breadth, patience, insight, concentration, discrimination? And will any of you tell me how these qualities are to be gotten possession of? They come by training as Ruhling came to the answering of how to build Brooklyn Bridge. There is but one name by which to call the means of acquiring such things: drill. And how long a practice does it require to learn such energies and handicrafts of mind? How long does it take for a man to become a skilful blacksmith before you will trust him to put a shoe upon your favorite horse? And can one have the drill sufficient for achieving a disciplined mind without a drill master? How long has your daughter had an instructor for the piano or the organ? Probably then the

mental equipment which will put an American in the way of properly meeting his duties as an American citizen and farmer will find the best teachers and thorough schools at least equally requisite. It will seem to you also, I know, a most natural suggestion, that there are rich mines of wealth in the writings of the fathers of our republic, without some knowledge of which an American can hardly be said to be adequately educated. No literature is more calculated to instruct and inspire to the best citizenship than our own. The productions of these founders and expositors of our national fabric have this excellence, that while they are replete with the maturest statements of moral and political truths and maxims, those statements come with especially generative force from men who were prominent actors in maintaining the truths they taught with their lives and fortunes. There is every reason to believe that the restoration of these early productions to a place in the school instruction of our citizens would be conducive alike to more thorough views upon important questions and to the cherishing of high ideals without which the largest information and the most sagacious insight will be unable to realize the objects of patriotic hope. My fellow citizens, I am not one of those who think that if our nation should fail to realize the purpose which seems to be appointed for it by Providence, the cause of liberty would ultimately be defeated. The resources of God for accomplishing His plans are not limited by the failures of any man or any nation. But we are all agreed that under any circumstances our obligations are very great. In these times of peril especially there is a tragic interest that calls on us all to be devoted to the utmost service we can render, alike in our wider and our narrower sphere. The issues that are already above the horizon press upon us heavily and threateningly. Those that are thus far unseen will be upon our children if not on us, and they will probably be no less serious. The air is heavy with portent. While it is incumbent therefore on us to form intelligent convictions upon these issues, it must be apparent that this is possible only to the well trained mind and character.

So far as we ourselves have not passed the period of life which allows of such training, it is well. However this may be, it remains at least that we have the privilege of ensuring it, as our best legacy, to our children.

I do not care to raise the question where or how this education of the farmer is to be acquired. If you think it can be acquired in high schools, and are surely right in your judgment, why then let it be only in high schools. If it be in the common public schools, let us hasten with our children to the common schools. If it can be certainly gained in an agricultural college with a course of two years,-if that will do it—and I am sure you will agree with me that it will not do it-then the agricultural college for two years. If, I say, two years will give the farmer boy the momentum, the strength, the depth, the breadth, to be such a farmer as I have described, and with it such an American citizen as this perilous age of ours requires, then I say again the agricultural college for two years. If the agricultural college for four years is requisite and enough, then the agricultural college for four years. I have no superstition in regard to education, or in regard to colleges. Education is worthy of just so high an estimate as it justifies by the use it serves for human life, and no more, and the college shall have no higher valuation, in my regard, than I can account for in what the college does in making men; nor do I believe that all can have the privilege of being educated at college. But if such an education as you need for your sons unless it be their lot to be likely to take a secondary place in life, is to be secured only by a longer and severer course of mental training in a thorough college, manned by experienced and sturdy teachers, who are also doing their best duty as citizens in the thick of the fight, like Beloit, or Madison, or Ripon, or Milton, then the college, and see you to it that your sons find their way through such a college and nothing less. But, farmers of Wisconsin, farmers of only twelve years. short of 1900, the message I have to you to-night, which I thank you for giving me the privilege of bringing, is that your calling requires excellent education, to put you abreast of this great age in which we live.

I have chosen to say nothing of what is made necessary by a citizenship which reaches higher than this world and beyond the present life as well by the intrinsic dignity of our manhood. This only is my message: that while you look to the breeding of stock, and the selection of manures and the perfecting of agricultural products, and all kindred and honorable things upon the farm, you see, fellow citizens, that that underlying and imperial necessity be not disregarded nor in the least put by-the necessity of being educated men, yourselves and your sons, in order indeed that two blades of grass may grow where one grew before, and, especially, in order that in the responsibilities which are upon us as American citizens we may not fail of the world's great hope, and so "government of the people, by the people and for the people, may not perish from the earth."

9:00 A. M., WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1887.

Hon. N. D. Fratt in the chair.

FINE WOOL SHEEP AND THEIR PLACE IN OUR AGRICULTURE.

BY C. R. GIBBS, WHITEWATER, WIS.

There are few subjects claiming our attention more interesting or important than that assigned me for presentation to this convention, " Fine wool sheep and their place in our agriculture." I shall not attempt to enlighten or instruct you by searching the records of antiquity to prove that Abel, the earliest sheep breeder of whom we have any reliable account, kept only the Spanish merino. But it is seriously claimed that at the beginning of the Christian era, the better classes were robed in cloth made from the fine wool sheep of Spain. The ancient records may be consulted by those who doubt or wish to know more of the early history of the flock. It is no slight evidence of the degeneracy of our times that fine wool sheep have fallen so much in the