values go up. We then have either lighter taxation or an increased revenue.

The agricultural school will not produce this result at once, but it will work in that direction. It should come, not because the farmers want it or do not want it, but simply as an agency in the development of the material interest of a great state and as a means of giving attraction, dignity and power to the farmer's profession.

DISCUSSION.

Mr. S. J. Seymour introduced the following resolution: Resolved, That it be the sense of this convention that it is the duty of the legislature of this state at the present session to provide the means for the establishment of an agricultural college for the state of Wisconsin.

Pres. Sanger- Put your resolution in writing and send it up.

Mr. Curtis Is there to be any time for the discussion of the paper we have listened to?

Pres. Sanger- If the convention wishes to discuss it, of course we will do so. We will discuss that subject now, or after Mr. Arnold has read his paper, as the convention desires.

Mr. Arnold- I may say that I have a paper on an entirely different subject, and if this convention sees fit to discuss this question the balance of the evening, -perhaps it would be more profitable. I am not anxious to read my paper at all. I would suggest, if I should read my paper, that we discuss the question before us, as the first paper is also entitled to some consideration and discussion.

Mr. Curtis - The papers read are connected with each other, and it seems to me they ought not to pass unheeded and without any discussion. It is not often that we listen to such papers. But I do not wish to crowd my friend

Arnold off at all.

Mr. Arnold I suggest that we discuss these two papers

before we proceed to anything further, and make a motion to that effect.

The motion was carried unanimously.

Mr. Curtis-I want to compliment my friend Adams on three things: one is his selection of a subject; another is, he got upon the right side; and the third is, he treated it in a very able manner, as it seems to me. I could not but think, as we were listening to it, what a magnificent thing it would be if the principles laid down in that paper could be carried out in the state of Wisconsin. The people of the state have been asking the legislature to give them an extra appropriation for the use of this work. I know of my own knowledge that that money, that appropriation is needed. I know it is needed sadly. I believe that a large majority of the farmers of this state are in earnest in asking for it. I believe they ought to have it. That the superintendent ought to have all he asks for, all that we can use in an economical manner, whether it be more or less. It aids as no other institution in this state ever has aided the farmers to get an education in their special lines; such an education as they have never had the opportunity to get before. Those of us who are getting old and gray headed, who cannot have the benefits of agricultural schools in any other way, can get something here. We can get a knowledge here that we can get nowhere else. Through these institutes the best of our farmers can get together and rub up and freshen each other's ideas, and get new thoughts from each other that will be of almost inestimable value to the farmers of the state. But Mr. President, we don't reach, we cannot reach the class that is to come after. They, except in a few cases, do not attend our institutes. We cannot reach them, and the institution may die out. Those of us who have aided and assisted to carry on the principles taught there are not ourselves educated as we wish we were, as we have often and long wished to be. We are educating ourselves, as we are trying to aid others, in an indifferent way. One little incident that happened a few days ago: we had one of the professors of the Agricultural College of Michigan with us. In his addresses before us, which were on insects injurious to

agriculture, there was one single class of insects that had annoyed me almost beyond endurance. I had studied all the books and all the papers I could find. I had worked and tried, but failed to get any knowledge of how to protect myself against them, and I have time and again within the last fifteen years seen a time when I would cheerfully have given a thousand dollars for the knowledge he gave us, and gave the people of the state, at a cost to the state of, I think, about somewhere from $50 to $75. Mr. President, there are many such points as this, very many of them that we can get, the farmers cannot reach because they do not know them themselves. This corps of professors and teachers will be spending their time studying and reaching out, and with their apparatus, their instruments and their experiments, they are able to obtain knowledge that we, the practical every day tillers of the soil, never can get of our own unaided help, and we need them. Michigan needs them, and we need them here. Mr. President, I believe honestly and sincerely, that with the aid of these institutes, we could have the principles laid down in my friend Adams' paper carried out, if the legislature would aid us, assist us in carrying them out. I believe that old as I am, I may yet live to see the day when the farmers of Wisconsin shall be the grandest set of farmers in the United States of America. (Great applause).

Mr. Arnold — We are now. We are the best farmers in America. (Renewed applause). We are that kind of fellows now. We have the best reports; the best reports of any state in the Union come from the State of Wisconsin, and these gentlemen that come from other states say we are the most wide awake set of farmers they find anywhere. We have better institutes than they have in any other state in the Union; still we want them better still, and we are going to have them.

Mr. Sayre - It does very well for our Brother Arnold who has been at these institutes to get up and talk about the farmers of Wisconsin being so advanced and such nice fellows, and so well up with the times, but it is not for us fellows here —

Mr. Sayre I don't take any word back that I said about the farmers, and the wide awake way we manage each other, but this is the point I want to reach to-night; the farmers that commenced here forty years ago found a virgin soil; we found everything. All we had to do was to use a little muscle, and a great deal of it too, and we did it. That day where a man went on new soil and broke it up is past. We have accomplished grand results. I do not deny any praise to the farmers of Wisconsin. But now our

environments and those which are to come to our boys are changed. They can't break the sod, they can not raise the stock we have raised nor at such low prices. Their whole surroundings are different from the surroundings we had when we came. What is a boy going to do? In the first place his farm is not as fertile as it was in the fifties and sixties. How is he going to bring it back? He has got to use brains. How will he get the necessary knowledge? I will take the institute as a stepping stone; that is the first. It is not prolonged enough, it is not educational enough. It does well enough for us old farmers, but the boys must have an education that will enable them to build up these farms. Where will they get that knowledge? In the agricultural schools in the first place. And so it is in the breeding of stock. He has got to keep up with the times, and indeed in every single thing on a farm a boy has got to have more brains now than we had to have twenty-five or thirty years ago. We had muscle then, and we accomplished what we did accomplish grandly, but the boy has different surroundings and a more difficult problem, and it is only by a system of agricultural education that he can be provided with a knowledge which he requires. There are a great many objections, and the objections come up constantly, that the boys and the girls attending these schools are graduated away from the farm. In a little conversation which our friend spoke of only last week, one of the professors of the agricultural college in Michigan was asked the percentage of graduates that become farmers. I forget the percentage but it was a large one, and he turned around and he said

this, "the percentage of boys who go on to the farm from our institution is greater than the percentage of young men who study law and go into the law, and greater than the percentage of young men who study medicine and go into medicine." Our percentage is larger than either of those cases, and that man was well informed and you can believe what he said. I only wish to bring this up to emphasize the fact that with the present surroundings we require a new education for our boys, and that education we must give them.

Mrs. Alura Collins Hollister-I did not hear anything said about the girls. The gentleman has not said Mr. Sayre -May I interrupt the lady? the word "boys" I want to put in the (Laughter and applause).

Every time I used word "girls" too.

Mrs. Hollister-I was only going to say that I never knew a farmer to get along, unless his wife knew something. (Applause and laughter).

Mr. Kellogg - A lady down on the programme to day gave us one of the best papers at Mount Sterling of any paper we had during the week. She is a widow, and has taken up the dairy and the farm, and is more successful to-day, in dollars and cents, than the majority of the farmers of the state. While I speak a moment of the institute work, the interest manifested by the farmers throughout the state where I have been, has been shown by the crowded halls and crowded churches. At Mount Sterling the church was crowded to its utmost, from the beginning to the end; and when I learned from one of the papers that ground can be renovated by clover cheaper than we could draw manure a mile, I made up my mind I would go home and quit paying fifty cents to a dollar a load and drawing it two miles; and if these are facts and if farmers know them, why not have better farms? Let us have more stock and better improved farms all over the state. It has been said that the institute work is for the benefit of the farmers now upon the farm, and the agricultural college will be for the benefit of the boys. This institute work cannot be dropped, there is too much at stake now. The intelligence manifested by those whom I meet at