The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-01-02
PHYSICAL INDIANA.
The Physical Condition Of the Development of
the Stase-Dutyof Educational Agencies.

Indiana is but alarge farm. Her territory of
$1,000 square miles would yield 264, 0O0 farms OF
slightly acres each. Within two generations this
great area has been surveyed, fenced reclaimed
from nature, threaded with roads and railways,
and dotted with towns and villages. Its popula-
zion has grown to over 600 coo; over sixty to the
square mile
Natural causes are in her favor Tipped at a,
happy incline to the southern sun, the seasons
emile on Indiana. May and June bring abundant
moisture, July and August a harvest bright
aud sunny. The Indian summer dries its corn
for an early harvest, and. as in the past season.
pushes the autumn far toward the close of the
aying year The great lakes and Kentucky
foothills have compelled the worlds
east and west travel across our borders and
made them the pathway of domestic commerce.
80 that its 5000 miles of railroad, paid for by
outside parties, are an essential part of our
wealth. Dramatically Indiana has been compare
lively free from those violent changes which
weaken vitality and debilitate the system Plaques
Of the old world, fevers of the South, famine
with it's Accomplishments of moral discord, dis
Ease and death, have not devastated our fair
areas and malarial diseases have decreased in
the ratio that their causes have been removed.
Indiana is essentially an agricultural State,
and the fertility of our soil is the main reason
Of our prosperity. Out of the past flows the
present, both of organic and inorganic nature.
I doubt not that when nature sorted her atoms
she had the great valley of the Mississippi in
view, the forests and prairies OF Indiana. do
not lookupon this great expanse, mountain-walle
from the eastern and western seas, located in
the most favorable climatic zone, and sloping to
the southern sun and seas. as a cosmic acct
dent, but rather as definite thought in the
mind of the creating God.
The infinite progress which in the organic
realm has in due time and without violence
evolved the nomad and ascidian, and the various
branches of the animal tree eliminating in man,
with his power of speech, and sense of duty
end continuity of life, includes also the Missis-
sippi valley and the United States in the scheme
of the world, and adapted our area to the natural
function Of providing food. shelter, and
clothing to great masses of the race Of men.
Nature has thrust this food providing function
upon us. 1t is in our ripening air and mellow
soil, in our geography and geology, and we can
not escape from it, The youth hates it, and
seeks his way out-through trade, or commerce.
or the professions-and this is the bane of schools
and colleges that they unfit ouryouth for the
joys and duties of pastoral life. 1t is with the
greatest difficulty that purely agricultural courses
are sustained in the socalled agricultural
schools
The entire machinery which the State has pro-
vided at our State agricultural college rarely
induce score of Indiana youths from an agri-
cultural class of million in numbers to take
IL
for the work they are to do. But the State Is
justified. The ideal is before the people, and
the influence of an agricultural school is not cone
fined to its garden beds and recitation rooms
Sooner or later we shall come round to our true
station and teach and feel the true dignity and
independence of farmer life. l love to linger
about this idea, for my early feet have pressed
the early furrow. Homo is the moist
o. humid, and as with Anteus our
strength is greatest when our feet are IN the
soil which in life flows through our bodies. and
to which in death return. The world is as
yet but little above the primal wants By the
sacred legend six thousand years have passed
since man was set to till the soil and woman to
weave, and still we hear the cry of the hungry
and the naked. 1t resounds without the very
walls wherein gather to discuss high philoso-
ply and pedagogics. Peace and justice do not
yet brood over world properly fed, clothed and
housed. To this end some handle, others pro-
ddce, all USE But it is the farmers province to
create He directs, however rudely and blindly,
the forces and matter of nature, and under his
ministering hand gas water and soil become
house, dress and food. He controls marriage,
and even sex, for these vary as the food ratios
favorable environment, which is mainly abun-
dant food, causes an excess of female births.
Emerson says: "The farmer is boarded
capital of health, as the farm is the
capital of wealth; and it is from
him that the health and power. moral and intel
lectual, of cities come The city is always re-
cruited from the country. The men in cities
who are the centers of energy, the driving wheels
of trade politics or practical arts aud the wom-
en- OF beauty and genius are the children or
grandchildren of farmers and are spending the
energies which their fathers hardy, silent life
accumulated in frosty burrows. in poverty, ne
Cessity and darkness"
Standing for the necessities for hard work and
modest gains, the farmer is the maker of values,
o continuous benefactor AS his crops grow he
learns patience Clingng to his farm he repre-
sents per1nanence, living least artifcially, he
Is healthy Spending as he gains, he has com
petence. Being the majority, they control state
issues, and observing the moralities, they live
virtuously. AS middle men and professional
men, we may take off our hats in the presence
OF every honest farmer of Indiana, for these are
the untitled soveregns, whose servants we are
They are those who make and uphold the laws,
and for whose service government has it's excuse
Tor being. Indiana or any sister State is not far
from lts-downfall when this class is not respect
ed
And thus do I excuse myself for contendine
that the physical development and future pros
perity of the State is mainly with her farmer
yeomanry For this class the ages have emptied
their treasures into our midst The old
azoc continent furnished the substratum of
limestone and sandstone, which the silurian and
Devonian and sub-carboniferous sea spread out
as terraced floor. in successive bands from
Ohio to Illinois, as our geological map shows,
while the glacial epoch with its rivers of ice
smoothed the rough sea beaches and covered
them with the powders, gravel, sand and CLAW
from the paleozoic and crystalline beds of Canada
and Michigan. And so in Indiana, the rocky
elements are kindly mixed-sand clay and
broken stone, with rich organic detritus, giving
us, through the drift area of the State, a soil
light and Microscopic absorbing, retaining and
transmitting the gases and liquids es-
sontlal to the life of plants. and
seeondarily Of the lower animals and man.
This is our heritage A double gift: the spon-