still greater remove from the farmers who sustain them, in town or county centers. These schools, in strict dependence through their several grades, and in constant interchange, are a primary means by which the farmer should organize himself and family, socially and intellectually, into the community. It will cost time, effort, enterprise, money, but it will amply repay all. It is a form of action truly economic, as it demands immediate expenditure in behalf of remote but large returns. The fool will stumble at this first obstacle in his path, and fall, and there will be none to pick him up.

Let the farmer hide himself away in the country, hide away his family, cut off his school from its direct dependence on those above it, and a boorish, uncivilized temper will take possession of him and his household, hostile to all social progress. This is the natural tendency of things, and farmers need unusual self-assertion and enterprise to counteract them. They need constantly to be reminded that a school separated from its natural, living connections with those above it, neither feeding them nor being fed by them, is of little educational value, and destitute of social force.

Here, I think, I may rightly urge a point more immediate to my own work. If the University is to exert the influence it ought, its power must be felt, descending through every grade of instruction to the most primary. The brain-power of any class will ultimately be its social and political power, and if farmers are fully to win and firmly hold what belongs to them, it must be by virtue of many and accessible paths upwards into every grade of knowledge. I think we mistake at this point, and are ready to feel that a high school, a normal school, a university, are not direct educational forces except to those who attend on them. Knowledge, social influences, are much more subtle and penetrative than this opinion implies. A community, with whom education commences well in its primary forms, and passes up by unbroken gradations to the liberal training of the university, acquires a general intelligence, sagacity and brain-power which every one of its members is sure to feel, and of which every one of them is made a large partaker. Such a community is transparent, the light of ideas penetrates everywhere.

Suggestions, thoughts, theories, pass from man to man, and those who have enjoyed little school education become none the less educated. The bright minds, like stalactites in a cave when

the torch is introduced, scatter light in brilliant reflection on all sides. Farmers are ready to regret that a son sent to the University, even to its agricultural instruction, is lost to the farm. Two things are to be said here. A son is not lost to the farm interest because he is lost to farm work. The farmers are to be the factors of many other classes, are to furnish supplies not merely in food, but in that better staple of tough and sturdy young men. These young men, whether in mercantile, professional or political life, will not easily forget the farm that was a true parent to them; nor the farm-house that holds their best affections and tenderest recollections. Set it down as one of the advantages of farming that it yields so many of its sons to so many callings; that it can and does so deeply penetrate the entire life of the state, and give so much to it in so many ways. The second thing to be considered is, that in proportion as farmers are thoughtful, intelligent and possessed of that fore-handedness which true economy confers, the occupation will become more attractive, and draw to itself more of its educated children. I hold fast to my first assertion, there are very few callings that promise the same sober, honorable, pleasant life as intelligent farming; and if any prejudice remains in the public mind against it, it is chiefly becaues of the dull, stolid, insufficient way in which much of its work is done. Let us struggle with this actual burden of ignorance till we cast it off; let us catch the promise of the years to come and realize it, paving a way which all feet can travel, to that period in which the plain but substantial comforts, uniform intelligence and social power of our farming population shall make them the body of a strong and prosperous nation; shall capacitate them to deal wisely and kindly with those political and social questions which press on their consideration. Farmers are under training now as never before. The agricultural fair, the agricultural convention, are all effective in their way. There is only requisite, knowledge enough, social activity enough, to allow these yeasty elements of thought to work upward and downward, and leaven and enliven the whole lump. Some farmers are non-conductors to truth. They want an industrial conversion, a sudden and violent waking up, till they can see and feel the things that make for their economic and social salvation; till the force of example and precept can find its way among them. We are sometimes given to a laudation of farming, true neither to our convictions nor our feel

ings. It is begotten of superficial sentiment, or of the arts of the demagogue. Farming is a rugged, in some aspects of it, a coarse calling. Hard hands, severe exposure and dirty work are staples with it. Its difficulties are not to be removed by a sprinkling of rose-water. Yet in spite of all, it gives better conditions of health, more play to thought, more delight to the eye, a larger perception of natural beauties, and more favorable opportunities for generous living, primitive hospitality and cordial, social intercourse than most pursuits. Let the farmer be intelligent and all other essentials will follow in due order.

I have flattered you to night by telling you in a plain way the plain truth as it presents itself to me. There are many farmers to whom my criticisms do not apply, many to whom they only partially apply, but these know as I know that there are many to whom they do most emphatically apply. This land, our goodly land, in all its physical comforts, its social privileges and political powers, will fall to farmers, if only they will go wisely up to possess it, with toil of hand and toil of head and generosity of heart. It is not flocks that are wanted,-men gathered into fraternities, and bell-wethers to lead them leaping into somebody's else field—but individual strength that achieves its first victories over and on its own acres, and, standing there, claims what rights belong to it, and must fall to it. I believe in farmers, let them believe in themselves, and when they have won the intelligence which is the key to the store-houses of nature, they will stand as Joseph stood in Egypt at the door of his granaries, able to buy up the entire nation.

Mr. ANDERSON. I think I never have listened to an address on this subject that I could take less exceptions to. It appears to strike the question right in the face. I think President Bascom must certainly have lived on a farm in his life-time, or he could not have photographed the farmer as he is, in the masterly manner he has in that adddress. I am only sorry that we have not a larger number of farmers here to listen to that address; but I hope it will be placed where we can all read it, for it certainly should be read by all the farmers in Wisconsin, and read in every farmers club and grange.

Mr. GRANT. I feel, for one, that if the address could be placed in the hands of every farmer in the state of Wisconsin, it would do him good. I am satisfied that it contains the best things ever told to farmers. I learned from the address some things that I did not

know, although I have been a farmer all my life-one of the low, clod-hopping kind-but I have come up to Madison, and now I can see just where I have missed it, where I have lost a good deal of money, and I am satisfied that address should be in the hands of every farmer in Wisconsin.

President STILSON. The state issues 5000 copies of this address printed in the annual report, and where the next volume is published you will be able to get copies. Gentlemen of the convention, I have one single word in regard to the address, that if it had been possible for the President to have written it since the discussion in the room below this afternoon, where one of the professors was handled somewhat roughly, I should have thought, perhaps, that he had applied it particularly to that case; but as it was written some time before. I think he has fully squared off with us.

Adjourned until 9 A. M., Thursday.

THURSDAY, 9 A. M.

On motion of Secretary Field, it was ordered that no member of the convention be allowed to speak more than five minutes on any subject, and not more than once without permission of the convention.

THE NEED OF ORGANIZATION AMONG PRODUCERS.

BY HON. M. K. YOUNG, GLEN HAVEN.

say

This allow me to paper, at the outset, is intended as suggestive of thought, rather than the record of opinion.

In speaking of the need of organization among producers, I would be understood to allude only to the producers of material values.

The producers of intellectual values, whether in literature, the professions, or science, being surrounded with the critical observation and scrutiny, of minds alike engaged, are mutually aided by each others failures, as well as triumphs, and with them, organization for high achievement, or mutual welfare is not an absolute necessity; still they organize, to aggregate their wisdom to be drawn upon for further individual or general effort.

Likewise, in commerce and trade, those who produce new values, by saving the time of others engaged in the production of other new values, and whose conflicts or alliances tend directly to elicit aggregate skill, fall back on organization to attain an ultimate perfection.

With these classes of producers, organization is a historical as well as a fixed fact, elaborated almost into a science. Not so with the producers of material values. Their crude attempts at organization are more modern, less general, and less perfect.

Laborers, mechanics, manufacturers, farmers and horticulturists need much more the experiences of those alike engaged, for in them lie the varied sources of the material wealth of this nation. Organization to them means much more than to other classes in the great activities of life, by reason of their less frequent contact with each other.

There being a right and a wrong way of doing the most simple performances of labor, it becomes important that the experiences of as many, or all engaged therein, be massed for the benefit of all.

To the ax-man it is of importance, not only that the implement he uses have a keen edge, but that the arc of that edge be just what is best adapted to the principles of the sliding-cut, while the face of the implement have the utmost smoothness as well as just such increase of thickness and shape as will allow it to sink the deepest into the wood, consistent with the necessity of clearing itself of chips. All this secured, and the handle of the implement must be of that length and construction to enable the chopper to place the second lick just where the first left off, in sinking the carf to the greatest extent with the least possible expenditure of force.

To the splitter of wood it is important to know just how to apply the principles of inclined planes to the grain of the timber, and the resistance of knots, as well as that construction of the beetle which gives him the nicest control and the utmost power in propelling the wedge in the execution of its work.

To the mechanic it is important to compare the different methods of manipulating details and adopt only those in harmony with the highest excellence and most economical construction.

As to the manufacturer, all this is true, and more. But when we come to the farmer and the horticulturist, can we over estimate the importance to them, of the experiences of the past as well as