Arizona republican., 1898-06-28
TO EDUCATE THE FARMER.
By Science, Not By Belles Letters.
 Says Secretary Wilson.

Washington, June 27.-Secretary of Agriculture Wilson delivered an ad
 dress at the commencement exercises
 of the Maryland agricultural college
 last week. He said in part:
 "The colleges designed to teach the
 sciences that relate to agriculture are
 new in our system of education. The
 department of agriculture is a clear
 Ing house for these colleges and experi-
 ment station of the several states with
 regard to their work. It is the aim of
 the department to encourage work that
 bears directly upon the requirements
 O. The farmers of the country, to help
 in the solution of problems that the farmer cannot grapple with for want
 of time, training and apparatus, and
 With regard to education in the col leses, to insist, mildly, that it shall be alorg lines having regard to science as the major study, rather than to belles' lettres.
 Our agricultural colleges are en- deavoring to induce young farmers to avail themselves of the facilities of fered to study the sciences relating to tkeir work. Many of them are sue ceeding as we'll as could have been ex- pected, when we consider the inf1u- ences that surround the farm boy and girl. Their fathers and mothers, their secular and Sunday school teachers. the minister and the family physician were not educated along these lines. school histories never mention a fla nous soil physicist, breeder, feeder or dairyman= and yet experts in these hn
 Since 1863 there has been much more systematic research into the laws of nature governing production than in all the ages that preceded the acts of congress endowing colleges and agri- cultural experiment stations and build ing up the department of agriculture in Washington. The American system in the department of agriculture, and in forty-five states and four territories, is unequaled in any other country and extorts admiration from fellows of the oldest universities of Europe who have studied it.
 It was difficult to get the farmer to the value of this education to himself and his children Many of cur colleges have but few students in strictly agricultural courses where sci entific study takes the place of the dead languages and dry philosophy.
 Agricultural education lacks a uni versity where the sciences are the everyday study of the best experts in the land; where laboratories are equipped with apparatus of the latest and most approved design, where l- braries contain everything purchasable i'll scientific lines, where correspond 5nce IS active between the chiefs of di- visions and investigators throughout he world. The department of agricul- t,re in Washington is such an insti- tuition. It contains divisions of me tcorOlogy, animal pathology, geologic and bio-chemic laboratories, divisions of dairying, of statistics, of biology, forestry, agrostology, vegetable and pathology, entomology, pcmolOgy, chemistry, soils, fibers and read inquiry. The graduates of the ag- ricultural collegs of the several states who have laid the foundations of a scientific education should be invited by congress to go to Washington to pursue their studies in special lines and get facilities and direction from the chiefs of divisions, without expense to the students. They could have ac- cess to the departmental and congress sicna1 libraries, to the museums of the and of the Smithsonian which contains department tai material. The university that George Washington had in mind is in existence now in the capital city. It lacks only the students I shall, in my next annual report to the president and congress, ask that this authority be given to the secretary of agriculture. No additional appropriations would be necessary until large numbers re-