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 ADDRESSES 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE DEDICATION of 
 THE AGRICULTURAL HIGH SCHOOL 
 at PETERSHAM, MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 MAY 22, 1908 
 
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ADDRESSES 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE 
 
 DEDICATION 
 
 of the 
 
 Agricultural High School 
 
 AT 
 
 PETERSHAM, MASS. 
 
 MAY 22, 1908 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 Geo. H. Ellis Co., Printers, 272 Congress Street 
 
 1909 
 
In ex^.^a 
 
 MAR 2 ^^ 6 
 
 
The new school-house in Petersham, built of stone from the 
 adjacent fields, upon a beautiful and commodious site, was the 
 gift of natives and friends of the town. It was dedicated on 
 the 22d of May, 1908. 
 
 The occasion, which brought together the school committees, 
 superintendents, and teachers of all the neighboring towns, was 
 made memorable by the presence of Mr. George H. Martin, 
 Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, President 
 Eliot, of Harvard University, Hon. Carroll D. Wright, President 
 of Clark College of Worcester, and Mr. Kenyon L. Butterfield, 
 President of the Massachusetts Agricultural College at Amherst, 
 — all of whom addressed the large audience assembled in the 
 Unitarian church, which, unhappily, was burned in the month 
 of September following. 
 
 At the request of the School Committee, Mr. James W. Brooks 
 acted as Chairman. 
 
 The exercises began with singing by the pupils of the school, 
 followed by prayer by the Rev. Mr. Spurr. 
 
 As President Wright was obliged to leave by an early train, he 
 was the first introduced, as follows : — 
 
 "There occasionally appears a man of exceptional character 
 and ability, who begins life with such profound appreciation of 
 its opportunities and responsibilities as consecrates his labor to 
 broad and widening fields of public service and makes the world 
 his debtor. If he may crown his career in such relation to the 
 young as enables him to impart to them the wealth of his gifts 
 and attainments and the inspiration of his example, there is 
 increasing hope for the worthy successors of whom the world 
 stands ever in need. 
 
 "We all recognize such a man in the Hon. Carroll D. Wright, 
 President of Clark College of Worcester, whom I have the pleas- 
 sure of introducing to you." [Applause.] 
 
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT CARROLL D.WRIGHT. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, — It certainly was a 
 great honor which your authorities conferred upon me by in- 
 viting me to be present on this occasion of the dedication of 
 your beautiful and unique institution of learning. 
 
 Massachusetts has always been proud of her school system, 
 and is justly proud of it; but occasionally there appears in the 
 country a city or a State that almost seems to take precedence 
 over our good old State. This is perhaps due in some de- 
 gree to the habit of our thought. That thought is that we 
 are about as good as anybody on earth, and that our school 
 system must necessarily be better than that of any other com- 
 munity. 
 
 We may therefore fall into the position of a school down on 
 the Cape. When Horace Mann was secretary of the Board of 
 Education, he visited that school,— a small country school, — 
 and he found it one of the best that he had ever visited ; and he 
 was insane enough to say when he was leaving, in making his 
 final remarks, that it was the best school in the Commonwealth. 
 Well, that school, under that praise of Horace Mann, stood still 
 for fifty years. Any suggestion of improvement was met always 
 with the remark, "Didn't Horace Mann say this was the best 
 school in the Commonwealth?" 
 
 Now we may be caught in that way in relation to our whole 
 public school system; but it cannot be alleged of Petersham. 
 You have established here an institution that is unique, and 
 which I may call, I think justly, ideal, because it combines the 
 cultural work of the school system as we know it with vocational 
 work, which is now in the minds of every one, not only in this, 
 but-in all other countries. 
 
 Why does this vocational idea take possession of the public 
 mind? I would not abate one jot or one tittle of the cultural 
 work of the schools. I would not even allow in colleges the 
 teaching of the classics to become obsolete. I am old-fashioned 
 enough to believe that Latin and Greek constitute the founda- 
 
6 
 
 tion of many things. And yet we have, too, in all our public 
 institutions looking to the present conditions, those things that 
 are surrounding us, those calls upon educational institutions 
 which must be met. 
 
 The idea of industrial education is abroad, but the idea of 
 agricultural education through the high schools and those of 
 the lower grade in the East has not been advanced to so great a 
 degree. Some Western and some Southern States have adapted 
 agricultural courses to the ordinary curriculum of secondary 
 and high schools. Those States are devoted to agriculture. 
 This, we say, is not an agricultural State; and yet the products 
 of the agriculture of Massachusetts amount to the goodly sum 
 of nearly sixty millions of dollars every year. Should we not 
 pay some attention to it? 
 
 The new departure at the Agricultural College at Amherst, 
 whereby that institution has established a normal department 
 for the very purpose of fitting teachers to take up elementary 
 agriculture in the common schools, will not in any way lower 
 the standard of cultural work. 
 
 In the investigations which I have had the pleasure of making, 
 under the authority of Congress, of industrial education and 
 technical and trade education as well, in different parts of the 
 world where these ideas prevail, it has been established beyond 
 doubt that a certain amount of work per day in connection 
 with the academic work of the schools not only leads to no 
 deterioration in that academic work, but enables the boy and 
 the girl to stand higher still in the book work. Why, that's 
 logical, that's giving a sound mind in a sound body, that is 
 bringing up the child in the way he should go ; and the results 
 everywhere are beneficent. 
 
 Here, with the agricultural element of your high school, you 
 are being talked about, you have already attracted the atten- 
 tion of people in this State and all over the country. An agri- 
 cultural high school in Massachusetts ! 
 
 A boy, you know, can become very enthusiastic and be very 
 easily interested in the construction of a machine. Any kind 
 of a construction where he can see the wheels go round is fas- 
 cinating to a boy. Early in life he learns this lesson. On a 
 little brook running through his father's farm, a ditch, he erects 
 
a water wheel made with pieces of old shingle. He so adjusts 
 it that the undershot current carries it around, and he is as 
 proud of it as Ericsson or any other great inventor. He is 
 stimulated at the start in constructive work, and it is construc- 
 tive work in this life that is most attractive. The girl does not 
 have that opportunity. We say the boy is interested, becomes 
 enthusiastic, over machinery. I feel that myself, — there is 
 nothing more inspiring than a grand piece of mechanical con- 
 struction, nothing more inspiring than the ocean steamship or 
 the great machinery used in engineering works. There is noth- 
 ing more elevating to one, in the way of learning things, than 
 to watch the movements of this vast mechanism. It tells us 
 of the hidden powers of nature. We learn the powers and the 
 laws of nature as applied, we understand what physics does 
 when we teach it or learn it, we know the laws that govern 
 the movements. And that knowledge leads us out into higher 
 knowledge, until the imagination ceases to work. 
 
 I presume you have been aboard a great ocean liner a tenth 
 of a mile long, and witnessed its great machinery, with its 
 triple expansion engines moving that vast construction over 
 and through the waters. You have stood in the presence of 
 some grand piece of mechanism. And what was the result 
 upon your mind? Do you remember that little expression in 
 "Childe Harold," where Byron pictures the church and the 
 stranger entering it, and he says, — 
 
 "Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not; 
 And why? It is not lessen'd; but thy mind, 
 Expanded by the genius of the spot, 
 Has grown colossal"? . . . 
 
 That is the effect always of any great construction, — to expand 
 the mind of the one who witnesses it. 
 
 If this be the effect where we are witnessing the works of 
 man, applying the laws of nature, of God, how much more 
 ought we to create that inspiration, or give the opportunity 
 for it to the young mind to watch the growth of nature, the 
 expansion of the seed into the plant, to the tree, to the fruitage ? 
 
 Why, we who were brought up on farms — I am not saying 
 how long ago it was in my case — were never taught anything 
 even of the elements of farming or of agriculture. The 
 
8 
 
 science of agriculture was not known. We had no ideas. It 
 was simply plough the land, fertilize it, plant the seed, keep 
 the weeds down, and harvest the crop. Absolutely unromantic 
 and uninspiring from that point of view! But to-day it is 
 something different, thanks to our methods of education. And 
 why should we not, as I have said before, become enthusiastic 
 over the development of the seed, as well as over the develop- 
 ment of power through different diameters of wheels and pulleys ? 
 
 It seems to me there is a field, therefore, not alone in indus- 
 trial training but in that splendid cultural training which shall 
 come from the development of the very elements of physical 
 life. 
 
 But there are things that must be considered. All indus- 
 trial training does not train: some of it does. We must under- 
 stand the combination of elements. I remember the story of 
 a young man who attended a horseshoeing school, where he 
 supposed he was learning how to shoe horses. Just as he was 
 about to leave the school, a man came along with a horse that 
 he wished to have shod. He said he would leave him there 
 while he went to the store to do some errands. He came back 
 in an hour, and the horse was not shod, and he asked the young 
 man what was the trouble. "Well," he said, "stranger, I 
 have been working here an hour trying to shoe your horse, and 
 I will be blessed if I can get his foot into the vise." He never 
 had seen a horse shod, but had worked with the foot of a real 
 horse which was accommodatingly put into the vise. Well, 
 all of us country boys know that there is another method which 
 works out practically, so that the horse is shod. 
 
 That illustrates the absolute necessity of combining your 
 shop work with your theoretical teaching, and without that 
 combination there are no really good results. 
 
 That's the trouble with manual training. The manual train- 
 ing idea went over this country almost like a fever. It was a 
 good thing, it paved the way for what's coming, what is, be- 
 cause it taught the people that any boy or girl who understood 
 the use of tools, no matter what he did with them, was 
 really better off, had more enjoyment in life. Any man to-day, 
 professional man or any other man, who has a kit of tools in 
 his house and can mend a lock or put up a shelf when the good 
 
wife wants it, or anything of that kind, is a better man than 
 one who cannot do that. That's what manual training does, 
 and that is not all. I would not abate that, either, but I would 
 extend it. The great demand to-day is for skill, for equipped 
 people. Once it was well enough for a man to be able to do 
 anything fairly well: he need not learn a trade if he didn't 
 wish to, he could get odd jobs here and there, and make a living. 
 To-day the world demands a man who knows how to do some- 
 thing, and can do it fairly well. So the demand everywhere 
 in business is for skill. We find that true in Massachusetts: 
 it's true all over the United States. And the movement that 
 is going on is simply in explanation of what you have done 
 and are doing here in this beautiful town of Petersham. 
 * This idea started, so far as the great movement is concerned, 
 at Philadelphia at the time of the Centennial. Germany, 
 France, England, Italy, and Belgium sent their products here 
 to be put into comparison with ours, and the German Bis- 
 marck sent word one day to his commissioner-general in Phila- 
 delphia inquiring how the German goods compared with those 
 of other countries, and the German commissioner-general re- 
 plied that they were poor and wretched, indeed. To-day 
 when you pick up an article and find the legend "Made in 
 Germany" on it, you feel quite sure that it is well made. Ger- 
 man skill at that time (1876) was wretched. France led the 
 world in mechanical skill, in the methods of making beautiful 
 things. Germany did not love France, but Germany could 
 not allow France to stand in the front rank while she took the 
 rear. So this great idea began to expand, Germany following 
 the French system. England — always behind up to a certain 
 point, and then rushing ahead; conservative and then radical, 
 but never going backwards — saw the point. She took her cue 
 from Germany and began to establish her industrial schools; 
 and the United States lagged behind, and is now a laggard. Be- 
 ginning to see the necessity of combining vocational with 
 cultural education, she is beginning to establish her trade and 
 industrial schools. And the movement will prosper, the move- 
 ment will extend, until you will find this country able to com- 
 pete with any mechanical-producing country in the world. 
 And, when she does that, it will be the result of applying her 
 
10 
 
 own skilled labor of its various grades, high and low, to her 
 magnificent natural resources. 
 
 We have largely imported our skill. Shall America be de- 
 pendent upon foreign skill? We have grown prosperous, more 
 prosperous as the years have gone on, because we have had 
 such inexhaustible resources to draw from. Now we must 
 compete with different movements, — the transference of in- 
 dustries from one part of the country to another, as from New 
 England to the South, a logical and natural and legitimate 
 movement; and, when they have the skill then here in New Eng- 
 land, we can say to the South, "Make all the goods we used to: 
 we will make the goods that we now import, — we will give you 
 as good fabrics as you can secure from any part of the world." 
 And it is only from this industrial education that we can accom- 
 plish this great and desired result. 
 
 I said a man should know how to do something. I have al- 
 ways considered that a man, however much he may know, how- 
 ever much he may have learned in college and university, who 
 cannot earn his own living and support his family, is an 
 ignorant man: he is simply a man of erudition who doesn't 
 know how to apply any of the principles of his knowledge. 
 
 Some of you are old enough to remember in one of the old 
 readers the story of the man, a scientific man, a professor, who 
 was in Norway, and he wanted to cross about twenty miles on 
 the water, and engaged a skipper to take him over. Five or 
 six miles out from land the scientist said to the skipper, "My 
 friend, do you know anything of the beauties of mathematics?" 
 "No," said the skipper. "Then," said the professor, "you have 
 lost a quarter of your whole life." A little way along again he 
 said to the skipper, "Do you know anything of the grandeur 
 and the beauties of astronomy?" "No," said the skipper. 
 "Well, then, you have lost another quarter of your life." Pretty 
 soon a squall struck the boat, and over she went; and the skip- 
 per said, "My friend, do you know how to swim?" And the 
 professor said, "I don't." "Then you have lost all of your 
 life." Simply a crude story to illustrate the advantage of know- 
 ing something and how to do it. 
 
 Of course, few of us know how to swim; but when a man knows 
 how to do something and do it well, to an extent to be able to 
 
11 
 
 support himself without becoming a public charge, I believe 
 with the distinguished gentleman [President Eliot] on this plat- 
 form, who says that the man who knows that some one thing, 
 any branch that he has thoroughly perfected himself in, is an 
 educated man. 
 
 And I wish to congratulate you that you have here to-day that 
 distinguished educator, president of the oldest college in the 
 continental United States, the grandest Roman of them all, 
 to bring you the greetings of that grand institution at Cambridge. 
 And it is happy, too, in a small way, that, while he brings you 
 the greetings of that old institution, I am able to bring you the 
 greetings of the youngest college in America. [Applause.] 
 
 The Chairman. — The Massachusetts Board of Education, 
 foster mother of our public school system, which in its life of 
 seventy years has produced results that have received world- 
 wide and fertile recognition, has at its head an accomplished 
 gentleman, deeply imbued with the importance of his work and 
 of the need of its intelligent expansion in every direction de- 
 manded by the public welfare. Personally or through his 
 officers and agents he is, as you know, in touch with all the 
 towns and districts of the Commonwealth. He has taken a very 
 sympathetic and helpful interest in the work that we are at- 
 tempting here. 
 
 I have the honor of presenting to you Mr. Secretary Martin, 
 of the State Board of Education. [Applause.] 
 
ADDRESS BY SECRETARY GEORGE H. MARTIN. 
 
 Mr. President and Friends, — Placed between one college 
 president who preceded me and two to follow me, it is appro- 
 priate that I should be very brief. 
 
 I have both a personal and an official interest in this occasion, 
 — a personal interest because, at the very outset of the undertak- 
 ing of the establishment of this new school and the building of 
 its new house, Mr. Brooks was kind enough to come and tell me 
 something of the plans, and then later to bring to me the plans 
 as they were developed on paper by the architect, and then to 
 tell me from time to time of the progress of the work and its 
 completion. So that I have been exceedingly anxious for this 
 day to come, when I might actually see the school-house that I 
 have seen in imagination for the last two or three years. 
 
 And, having seen it, I congratulate the people of this old town 
 of Petersham on having a school-house that I have no hesitation 
 in saying is the best country school-house in this Commonwealth 
 of Massachusetts [applause], combining more features of in- 
 terest and of utility and of beauty than any other building. 
 I might say that, when I speak of its being the most beautiful 
 rural school building in Massachusetts, it is not saying much, 
 because most of the rural school buildings of Massachusetts, 
 you know, are painfully bare and plain. 
 
 This school-house is not only useful, as many other school 
 buildings are, but it is architecturally attractive and beautiful, 
 and for that I congratulate you. You remember that the good 
 bishop in that great story of "Les Miserables," when his sister 
 reproved him for having devoted a part of the garden to raising 
 flowers, said, "The beautiful is as useful as the useful, perhaps 
 more so." And for that reason I am proud that we have in 
 this State such a school building. 
 
 I admire it, too, because it has some land with it. When Mr. 
 Brooks told me that there were to be twelve acres of land, it 
 almost took my breath away; and as I came across the Barre 
 road and saw one of the old time school-houses perched upon 
 

 
 
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13 
 
 the summit of a ledge, probably the most useless bit of land 
 that existed in the town or in the district at the time that 
 school-house was built, I could not help comparing the past 
 with the present, and thinking that, if the modern uses of 
 crushed stone had been discovered, they would have found 
 some less useful place for that school-house to be put. 
 
 I congratulate the town, not only upon having such a build- 
 ing, but upon having such donors of the building. 
 
 It is a splendid thing for a town to have sons and daughters 
 so loyal and so generous and so far-seeing that they are willing 
 to give of their time, means, and thought to provide so beauti- 
 fully for the needs of the coming generations of the town in 
 which they live. [Applause.] And I want to commend the 
 example of the givers and commend the building itself to 
 neighboring towns and neighboring people. 
 
 There is an old Arabian proverb which says, " A fig-tree look- 
 ing on a fig-tree becometh beautiful." So I hope that this 
 building, here in the centre of the State, may become such an 
 object of interest, of admiration, and of envy that many such 
 buildings will arise in various parts of the State. 
 
 There is a motive which has been very effective in this Com- 
 monwealth, and I presume in others. I am not sure that it is 
 the most worthy motive, but it has been very powerful. It is 
 well illustrated in the case of a division of one of these old 
 towns a few years ago. Part of the town had been set off, 
 and there had been a good deal of feeling in the division. For 
 a year or two the children in the new town went to the old 
 town for their high-school privileges ; but those who had been 
 most anxious to have the town divided felt that in some way 
 they were not quite independent, and they wanted a high school 
 of their own. The matter came up at the town meeting, where 
 it was discussed. Some of the old people began to query 
 whether this high-school education after all was good for much, 
 and the discussion went on between the supporters of the old 
 learning and the supporters of the new learning. One of the 
 most active men in promoting the division of the town happened 
 to be chairman of the selectmen, and he said, " Gentlemen, the 
 question is not whether this high-school learning is better than 
 the old-fashioned kind: it is the kind that's going, and the 
 
14 
 
 town that doesn't have it is going to get left." And they 
 voted an appropriation to establish the new high school. 
 
 That motive has been very powerful in this State, — the 
 motive of imitation. Each town wants to have something as 
 good as the towns around it. 
 
 I congratulate the town not only on the school building, but 
 also on its somewhat unique course of study. 
 
 President Wright has already spoken of this matter of in- 
 dustrial education and vocational training. I will not attempt 
 to discuss that at length, but I want to say this in regard to 
 this course of study : While the domestic science part of it is not 
 entirely unique (there are domestic science courses in numberless 
 high schools, though I know of no town as small as this in 
 which there is a course of this sort), there is no other town in 
 Massachusetts in which there is the same sort of work going on 
 in agriculture. This is the first, the pioneer, school in this 
 kind of work. The town is to be congratulated on having set 
 in motion here, put into practical operation, a scheme of edu- 
 cation for the boys and girls of the town which is so purely in 
 accord with the best modern sentiment in regard to what 
 education realty means. 
 
 And I wish to say in regard to it, lest there should be some 
 misgiving on the part of the parents or people that possibly 
 the new work that has been going on here for the last year may 
 have crowded out some of the old learning, that possibly their 
 boys and girls were not getting quite as much of what they 
 might have learned if there had been no greenhouse, no raising 
 of cucumbers and lettuce and things of that sort, and no cooking 
 for the girls. I had a note yesterday from one of the agents of 
 the Board of Education, — the man whose special work it is to 
 visit these high schools and inspect them for the purpose of 
 State approval, to see that they are worthy to get the State 
 aid, — in which Mr. MacDonald said that he had visited this 
 school this week, and he gave it his most cordial approval, say- 
 ing that the work of the school had steadily improved since 
 the school was established, and that it was worthy in every re- 
 spect of the confidence of the Board of Education and of re- 
 ceiving its share of the State aid. 
 I am glad to state this here, because it shows that, while the 
 
15 
 
 children have been getting something of the new, they have not 
 been losing anything of the old. 
 
 We speak of dedicating this school-house, and let me ask, 
 To what are we to dedicate it? Is it to be dedicated to the 
 narrow idea of education, that transient form which has been 
 so prevalent, or are we to dedicate it to the more permanent 
 elements of education? 
 
 We have been accustomed to think too much of education as 
 the acquisition of knowledge. We have graded our children, 
 and promoted them, on the basis of what they knew. We have 
 often graded our teachers on the same basis, — forgetting that 
 the knowledge that they acquire is the most transient element 
 which is possible in a system of education. We have given it 
 so much of our thought that we have hardly recognized there 
 was anything else. 
 
 I hope most earnestly that this school will be dedicated to 
 the permanent in education. Habits are permanent, power 
 is permanent, tastes are permanent. And I hope that those 
 elements of education will be prominent, if not uppermost, on 
 the part of those who, in the years to come, are to carry on the 
 work in this new school building. I hope that the scholars in 
 this school may acquire a taste for books, a love of good books, 
 — a permanent acquisition far beyond all that may come from 
 the contents of the books that they study. 
 
 You have a beautiful public library here. Probably the trus- 
 tees report the number of books that are taken out year by year. 
 The question is not, How many books are taken out in any 
 public library? The question is, Who takes them out? — are the 
 books taken out by the older people, the people who learned to 
 read in an earlier generation, or are they taken out in increasing 
 numbers by the children, who are growing up in the schools and 
 coming out of them? If they are, then the future of the library 
 is assured, and the library takes its place among the social agents 
 of the community. That is a part of the work of the school, — 
 to develop a taste for good reading. 
 
 Then there is a love of nature. Where can it be developed 
 so well as in this beautiful old town of Petersham? A love of 
 art, — and for that I congratulate you that the walls of this new 
 building are covered with the reproductions of the works of art 
 of all the ages. 
 
16 
 
 And, above everything else, the school should inculcate a 
 love of service. That, I take it, is the most permanent acquisi- 
 tion that can come from any system of education. Unless this 
 building and this school are to be dedicated to this love of ser- 
 vice, all that you can do will be idle. Every line of work in 
 the school can possibly be made helpful in this direction. Even 
 the school geography for the younger children may lead them 
 to see how intimately all the peoples of the world are bound 
 together by ties of interdependence, how for food and shelter 
 and clothing they are under obligations to people who are toil- 
 ing for them in far-off lands the world over. 
 
 I am inclined to think that the strongest, highest hope of 
 international peace is to come through the training of children 
 in the public schools to this idea of the universal brotherhood 
 of men in dependence one upon the other for the needs of life. 
 
 And then the history! What else can history be taught 
 for, if it is not to show to these boys and girls that men have 
 never lived for themselves? All the lessons of history, beauti- 
 fully illustrated as many of them are in these works of art in 
 your school, show that the contributions of great men and 
 women of the past have been not for themselves or for their 
 time. There is a picture on the walls of Columbus. What is 
 the lesson that the children are to learn from that? Columbus 
 discovered America not for himself. The Spaniards put over 
 his tomb, " Columbus for Castile and Aragon discovered a new 
 world." We know better now : we know that he discovered that 
 new world for the oppressed, the down-trodden, and the poor 
 of all the nations of the world. 
 
 There are in your school pictures of the works of the great 
 architects and artists of the past. Did they paint, did they 
 build, for themselves and their own generation alone? No, 
 they have painted, they have builded, for all times. There are 
 pictures there of great poets, great statesmen, great soldiers, 
 great inventors. Did they do their work for themselves or for 
 their generation alone? No, they did it for us, no matter how 
 far back they lived. 
 
 So out of these ordinary lessons of the public school there may 
 come these ideas of public service. And I take it that that is 
 the highest lesson that can possibly be taught. 
 
17 
 
 All these industrial elements lend themselves so perfectly, — 
 the agriculture, the domestic science, the mechanical arts, — they 
 all lend themselves (and that, I take it, is to be their highest 
 mission) to develop in these boys and girls the idea that they 
 are to be of use in the world, in the home, on the farm, in the 
 shop, in the counting-room, that they are to live, not for them- 
 selves, but for those about them,— live for the communities in 
 which they are placed, live for the world. 
 
 That, I hope, is the end toward which all the work of this 
 new school is to be dedicated. And, if it comes about that that 
 is true, then the State will have abundant reason, and ever more 
 abundant reason, to congratulate both the givers and the re- 
 ceivers of this beautiful building. [Applause.] 
 
 The Chairman. — The world has, at length, discovered that 
 its vital problems relate not to the fall, but to the rise, of man, 
 that its great battle is with ignorance, that its hope of 
 victory is in the untiring pursuit of universal enlightenment. 
 
 Those who have reached the period of life at which some of 
 us have arrived and can look back from the crest of the present 
 wave of advancement over the development — material, social, 
 and religious — of the past sixty years, realizing that it is far 
 greater than in ten times that number of preceding years, and 
 that, with the world's rapidly multiplying resources for achieve- 
 ment, the future progress must be more rapid still, can face the 
 problems awaiting solution with every reason for encourage- 
 ment. But, contemplating the profoundly impressive fact that 
 at the end of another hundred years the more than fifteen 
 hundred millions of people now upon the earth will be under 
 it and succeeded by the now unborn who must pass through 
 infancy and the alphabet and over the thresholds of school, 
 college, library, laboratory, workshop, and church for the 
 equipment and inspiration required for their ever-increasing 
 needs, it follows that even the matter of a new school building 
 in Petersham is not unworthy of consideration. We have, 
 therefore, felt justified in asking our friends and neighbors to 
 come and share with us our interest in what we have thus far 
 accomplished, and we have fixed upon this early date because 
 it affords us the presence of representative men distinguished 
 
18 
 
 for their profound interest and productive labor in the broad 
 fields of universal education. I have alluded to persons of 
 my own age but, of course, without thought of the eminent 
 head of our greatest university, for I was more than six months 
 old before he was born, and no one could associate advanced 
 years with one who can travel our country over and instruc- 
 tively address, upon subjects of great public interest, audi- 
 ences more in number than the days of his journeyings. Last 
 evening's Boston Transcript said, " President Eliot has taken 
 to the woods," adding "the Harvard forest, in Petersham." 
 What interest this may have had for municipal maladminis- 
 trators who have received his recent attention, I do not know. 
 For us, happily, it means the privilege and pleasure of listen- 
 ing to him here to-day. The great work and worth of his 
 productive life are so universally and gratefully known that 
 his fittest introduction is simple mention of the name of Presi- 
 dent Eliot, of Harvard University. [Great applause.] 
 
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT CHARLES W. ELIOT. 
 
 Mr. Chairman and Ladies and Gentlemen, — I have had the 
 privilege of being in active educational administration during 
 a period when a new method of teaching was coming into use 
 through all grades of education from the kindergarten to the 
 university. The speeches already made before you have re- 
 minded me that a few words about this new mode of education 
 would be pertinent, — the more so because your new school 
 perfectly illustrates it. 
 
 When I first became a teacher in Harvard University, the 
 whole method of the University was a training through the 
 memory, through book-learning absorbed and held by the mem- 
 ory, and also through a training in mental discrimination among 
 facts held in the memory or in printed records. I believe that 
 to be an exact description of the whole process of systematic 
 education sixty years ago. How changed to-day from bottom 
 to top! Now, in addition to this training of the memory and 
 this training in mental discrimination among recorded or re- 
 membered facts, a whole new process has developed. That 
 process is, first, a training of the senses, then a training in 
 recording observations made by our senses, and, finally, a 
 training in the exercise of good judgment on the facts reported 
 by the senses, — reported by the senses, I say, not found in 
 books, not simply held in the memory from reading books or 
 hearing lectures, but reported by the senses. This method of 
 training has become universal in all walks of education. A 
 recent exemplification of it you may now observe here in Peters- 
 ham. There is a new profession of forestry. How does the 
 University train men for it ? In books, to be sure, by reading, 
 but in laboratories more, in work with the fingers and the eyes 
 on chemistry, physics, geology, and geography. But we do 
 not stop there. Nowadays in almost all professional train- 
 ing there is a large amount of what we call "field work." 
 Thus we have hired a mine this summer, that our students of 
 mining and metallurgy may go into that mine, and themselves 
 
20 
 
 do there all the kinds of work needed to get out its ore. Again, 
 this very year, far-seeing, benevolent men, filled with public 
 spirit and enthusiasm for the new professions of the future, 
 gave the University a large tract of beautiful woodland in the 
 town of Petersham. We have there an essential means of 
 training our young foresters. They are going to live here in 
 Petersham four months of the year. They are going to work 
 eight hours a day in those woods, doing all the things that a 
 forester or a lumberman needs to know how to do. It is field 
 work, not book work. It is work with the senses, the muscles, 
 the nerves, with the whole being. Is it physical? Yes. Is it 
 mental? Yes. It is all kinds of training put together, develop- 
 ing simultaneously the whole man. So with all our professional 
 training: we rely on doing things more than on reading about 
 other men's doings, on doing one's self, doing with one's own 
 eyes and hands, doing with the whole body as well as with the 
 whole thinking force. That, I say, is the great new process 
 brought into education in my day, within my own observation 
 and the easy recall of my memory. 
 
 By the way, I think you will observe that the young men 
 who come here for this training in forestry will not be com- 
 pletely occupied with their labors. [Laughter.] Although 
 they begin with a lecture at seven o'clock, and work in the 
 woods eight hours thereafter, and sometimes have an hour's 
 walk to get home, I think you may depend upon it that they 
 will not be exhausted at six o'clock in the evening [laughter], 
 but will be ready to play on musical instruments, or act a play, 
 or dance, after their day's work. I think you will find them a 
 cheerful addition to the population of Petersham [applause], 
 and that they will add year after year— and more and more as 
 the years go by, and there are more of them — to the enjoy- 
 ments of life in this town. Moreover, these Petersham woods 
 will be preserved in all their beauty through long generations 
 as means of professional instruction in a subject vital to New 
 England's welfare. 
 
 Here is the great new educational process of the last sixty 
 years. Now your school-house and your school illustrate it. 
 The process has spread through all grades of education; but 
 here you are giving an admirable illustration of it at the stage of 
 
21 
 
 elementary and secondary education, the grades and the high 
 school. You are developing in this school instruction in the 
 sciences subservient to agriculture, horticulture, and arbori- 
 culture, that is, in chemistry, physics, and biology, — always, 
 of course, in the elements thereof. The pupils will learn to 
 do themselves the laboratory work of chemistry and physics, 
 and they will go on in the spring and summer weather to botany, 
 and learn to do with their own hands the planting and the 
 propagating, the transplanting, the weeding, and the pruning. 
 They will learn the difference between good seed and bad, be- 
 tween the seed that is profitable and the seed that is unprofitable 
 in this climate and on these soils. They will go on to the ele- 
 ments of zoology, and learn about the animal life that is useful 
 to men and the animal life which is prejudicial to crops and 
 therefore to men. These are the elements of the natural 
 sciences which are subservient to the great industries of agri- 
 culture and horticulture, these are the subjects which are allied 
 to agriculture and horticulture. 
 
 Is a school of this sort to make farmers or to teach actual 
 farming on the great scale? No. You do not propose that 
 your school shall employ a pupil all day in riding the horse that's 
 ploughing or in planting ten acres of potatoes. You propose 
 that the boy shall learn the nature of the elementary processes 
 upon which broad agriculture depends. 
 
 It does not take much room to demonstrate the difference 
 between good seed corn and poor seed corn. I saw a demon- 
 stration given at the University of Wisconsin the other day, 
 given in a flash by just looking at six pots full of young corn. 
 The area of the top of each pot was about one square foot, and 
 the depth of the pot as much. The soil was the same in every 
 one of these six pots, and they had been exposed to the same 
 conditions of heat and moisture. The first pot contained the 
 good seed: the other five contained samples of inferior seeds, 
 which had been commonly used in the State of Wisconsin be- 
 fore the University of Wisconsin produced a better seed. And 
 there the corn stood, — in the first pot a foot high, in the second 
 ten inches, in the next perhaps seven inches, in the next five, 
 in the next four. The same soil, the same conditions, — all the 
 difference was in the seed. How long did it take a boy to learn 
 
22 
 
 that lesson? Just the few seconds he needed to take in with 
 his eyes those pots and the crops they bore. This was just one 
 lesson in a six weeks' course on agriculture open to any farmer's 
 son in the State of Wisconsin. The University followed up the 
 lesson : it made the students who came to that six weeks' course 
 the only persons to whom the University sold the good seed corn. 
 So every one of the hundreds of students carried some of that 
 seed corn home to use himself and sell to neighbors. That 
 was the only way the neighbors could get it. One consequence 
 of this policy was that in a single year there was a million of 
 dollars added to the worth, the selling value, of the Wisconsin 
 corn crop. How much space did it take to give that lesson? 
 The area of this table. How long a time was the pupil in learn- 
 ing it? A few seconds. You can do all that in your school for 
 a great variety of seeds, plants, and valuable crops. This is the 
 new subject of plant breeding. 
 
 Your building, as has already been said, is a pioneer. I 
 would apply to it another name: it is a missionary, an actual 
 teacher for rural New England, Mexico, and far-off Argentina, 
 of the right way to build school buildings and of the right things 
 to put into them. But, as Mr. Martin has already said, it is the 
 land about the building that is a better teacher still. I have 
 understood that the town did not venture to accept from Mr. 
 Brooks the deed of more than nine acres. It was perhaps a 
 commendable modesty ; but I hope that in the future the town 
 will be ready to accept a good deal more, — the lesson of much 
 land about a school building is so valuable as missionary teach- 
 ing, of land enough for ornamental planting, playgrounds, gar- 
 dens, field crops, and fruits, large and small. 
 
 This leads me to touch on another feature of the work which 
 can be done in this school. A great deal of outdoor work can 
 be done on your school land, an invaluable addition to the 
 ordinary school curriculum. Consider how very, very few 
 schools have the means of providing that outdoor training. 
 
 Mr. Martin has already mentioned the value of the decorations 
 of your building. I cordially agree with him as to their high 
 value. They will give the pupils who resort to that building 
 year after year a broader outlook on the world and on civiliza- 
 tion; and that broader outlook, as Mr. Martin implied, is a prime 
 fruit of all worthy education. 
 
23 
 
 I was lately trying to answer the question, What is liberal 
 education, and what are its fruits? And I found no better 
 answer than this : A liberal education is any process capable of 
 developing a liberal mind: its result is nothing but a state of 
 mind. It does not imply the knowledge of any subject what- 
 ever, not of Latin, or Greek, or mathematics, or chemistry, or 
 physics, or history, or philosophy. It does imply a liberal 
 state of mind, open, free, eager, candid, looking abroad. The 
 curriculum of your school and the decorations on its walls ought 
 to give every pupil that spends five or six years there a broad 
 outlook on the world and a liberal state of mind. 
 
 Mr. Brooks and President Wright both spoke of Harvard 
 University, and its relation to the history of the Common- 
 wealth and to the education of our New England communities. 
 There is a close resemblance between the history of Harvard 
 University and the history of your school. Both institutions 
 were built up partly by the State, partly by the town, and partly 
 by private citizens of public spirit and benevolence, who were 
 ready to devote a portion of their own resources to public edu- 
 cation. That is exactly the way in which Harvard University 
 was founded and has been built up, — by the action of the colony 
 of Massachusetts Bay, by gifts of land from the town of Cam- 
 bridge, and by the bequest of John Harvard and his numerous 
 successors. And that is exactly the way in which your school 
 has been built up, — the State has aided ; the town has aided by 
 larger appropriations and by the contribution of the thought and 
 time of agents of the town; and then private benefactions have 
 aided. 
 
 There has been an interesting result at Cambridge, to which 
 I venture to direct your attention. The man, the private 
 benefactor who founded Harvard in pursuance of the previous 
 act of the General Court, has the best monument in the world. 
 The University bears his name; and the productive and uplifting 
 force of its graduates is fitly called in each generation the living 
 force of Harvard. It is a vital, growing monument which is 
 going down the centuries. And by and by — not soon we hope — 
 this town will take thought of John Harvard, and will make 
 here of this new school, this pioneer school, this missionary 
 school, a monument to another good name. [Applause.] 
 
24 
 
 The Chairman. — Gratefully unobservant of any inference to 
 be drawn from the closing remarks of President Eliot, let me 
 say that statistics show our great man to be the American 
 farmer. 
 
 He feeds the nation, fills its treasuries, grows the food we eat, 
 the cotton and wool we wear, the wood that makes and warms 
 our dwellings, and sends his surplus products over all the seas. 
 His are among the greatest of the inventions that have made 
 possible the gigantic results of his labor and have made our 
 country the richest in the world. 
 
 His sons are everywhere, — on the ranches, in the fields, in 
 the mines, in the army, in the navy, at the bar, on the bench, in 
 the pulpit, and in the halls of legislation, and more than a dozen 
 of them have found homes in the White House, at the nation's 
 capital. His colleges and schools are multiplying, and through 
 them his boys are learning the new meanings and definitions 
 which science and art are giving to soil and its products, to 
 irrigation, drainage, heat, light, color, electricity, and the modes 
 of their employment and adaptation in the vast and widening 
 fields of development ever opening to the ambitions of the young. 
 
 There is nothing in the earth, in the waters beneath it or the 
 heavens above it, alien to the interests of the intelligent and 
 thoughtful farmer. 
 
 It was recently announced that President Roosevelt is about 
 to name a commission to investigate the life, surroundings, 
 conditions, and interests of the farmer throughout the land, and 
 that he contemplates the appointment of President Butterfield, 
 of our Massachusetts Agricultural College, as a member of the 
 commission. I am happy to announce that he is here, and am 
 sure that you will soon be prepared to indorse the excellent 
 choice of President Roosevelt. [Applause.] 
 
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT KENYON L. BUTTERFIELD. 
 
 Mr. Chairman and Ladies and Gentlemen, — It is impossible 
 for me to tell you of the deep joy that fills my heart to-day, not 
 only at being able to be present here and assist in my small 
 way in this very significant dedication, but because of the 
 meaning it all has for me and the things that I am trying to 
 represent. 
 
 For forty years the Massachusetts Agricultural College has 
 endeavored to stand for that type of education which President 
 Eliot has so strongly stated to you. For forty years this college, 
 almost unaided, except by the work that has been done by the 
 State Board of Agriculture in an educational way, has held aloft 
 the torch of education for the farmer, and has clung to the idea 
 that Massachusetts agriculture is worth working for and worth 
 educating for. 
 
 And to-day there is poured into our lap as representatives of 
 agriculture — not directly, but through your new enterprise — 
 tribute as great as it is unexpected, because agriculture and 
 agricultural education have been recognized splendidly in these 
 moments, by this beautiful tribute from Mr. Brooks, by the 
 presence and words of Colonel Wright, a great publicist and 
 investigator, by the broad-minded secretary of the Massachu- 
 setts Board of Education, with all its noble traditions back of it, 
 and by the greatest president of our greatest university. [Ap- 
 plause.] 
 
 Do you blame those of us who love agriculture and who be- 
 lieve in its future for being proud? 
 
 And I am glad to be here, too, not merely for those things 
 which come home to me and which I must express to you, 
 but because the Massachusetts Agricultural College is pleased 
 to welcome to the ranks of the educational institutions of 
 Massachusetts this agricultural high school. 
 
 The agricultural colleges of the country for nearly fifty years 
 (the one in our own State for forty years) have carried this 
 burden nearly alone, and there has been a feeling among us 
 
26 
 
 that we needed an ally that would step in between the common 
 schools and the college and possess the land that there lies un- 
 tilled and that has so much needed tillage. There has been a 
 gulf fixed, there has been a missing link. There has been the 
 need of a school in every town and in every community which 
 would take agriculture as it is understood by the modern in- 
 vestigator and teacher and scientific farmer, and in a school 
 like this bring it before the boy and the girl in its true relations 
 to other subjects and in its true relations to the vocations of life. 
 
 Last week I had the privilege of attending the notable White 
 House conference in Washington, and it was generally felt, I 
 think, that one of the great addresses of the conference was 
 that by James J. Hill. In many respects it was a pessimistic 
 address. Mr. Hill marshalled a great array of figures to show 
 that American agriculture is far from what it ought to be, that 
 the American farmer is wasting his resources and is not securing 
 from the soil the returns that he ought to have, — all largely his 
 own fault. He spoke of the fact that the value per acre of our 
 farm products in this country is less than $12. He said that 
 even in the great agricultural State of Illinois the gross value 
 per acre of agricultural products is only $12.50, and in his own 
 State of Minnesota, noted for wheat, only $8.75; and he said 
 there were only two States in the Union where the value per 
 acre was $30 or more. He took occasion to point out what 
 seems to be the fact, that the original soil fertility of the 
 country is gradually being depleted, and he said, " There is 
 New England, once made up of fertile farms and now filled 
 with decadent farms and abandoned farms and a soil that is 
 losing its fertility." I felt that some New England governor 
 should have risen to her defence, because, while I have been 
 in New England only five years, I believe — and believe more 
 firmly than I did four years ago or two years ago — in the 
 future of New England agriculture. 
 
 I am ready to admit the truth of almost any story that can 
 be told on the darker side. It is perfectly true that dozens 
 and scores of the hill towns of New England have been depleted 
 in population during the last seventy-five years. It is true 
 that there are farms that have been given up. It is true that 
 farming as an occupation has not the prestige that it once had. 
 
27 
 
 It is true that the minds of the young people have been turned 
 away from the soil, as a means of a livelihood, to other things. 
 And it is true that there are communities to-day where people 
 are wondering whether, after all, the battle is worth fighting, 
 wondering whether the glory of these hill-towns has forever 
 departed. 
 
 I was sorry that in quoting those statistics Mr. Hill did not 
 say that, whereas the value per acre of improved land of the 
 agricultural products of the United States was less than $12, 
 and of that agricultural empire in itself — Illinois — only $12.50, 
 that the two States to which he referred which had a value 
 per acre of improved land of $30 or more were Massachusetts 
 and Rhode Island. [Applause.] 
 
 The census figures show that, whereas in 1880 there were 
 something over two millions of acres of improved land in 
 Massachusetts, in 1900 — twenty years later — there were only 
 twelve hundred thousand acres of improved land. That looks 
 like a doleful story, and yet the value of the product had in- 
 creased so that instead of the value per acre being $11.50, 
 as it was in 1880, it was $32 in 1900. 
 
 Now that means a change. It means that some towns per- 
 haps have been permanently put out of the list of real agri- 
 cultural communities. But it means change, and not neces- 
 sarily decay. And it means a change in obedience to the new 
 demands. It means that the old type of farming has been given 
 up. It means that land has been abandoned that never ought 
 to have been farmed. And it means more than that, — that the 
 land that is being farmed is farmed better than any other sim- 
 ilar area in America. 
 
 And that process has been going on since the census of 1900 
 in a marvellous way. I do not know anything about the number 
 of acres under cultivation, but the value of the products in 
 1907 was some twenty millions of dollars greater than the value 
 of the products in 1900, according to the best figures we can get. 
 
 Now it seems to me that with those things in mind, having 
 in mind also the constant growth of markets, that they are 
 perhaps as good as any in this country, if not the very best. 
 Having in mind also the fact that the American farmer is con- 
 stantly adapting himself to these changed conditions, we have 
 reason for hope. 
 
28 
 
 But I want to say this, too, that, if we are to have in New 
 England and in Massachusetts (as it seems to me we ought to 
 have) the very best type of agriculture in the world, we must 
 have the very highest type of agricultural education in the 
 world. 
 
 We cannot have the great areas of the West, we cannot 
 have the great staple crops of the West, but there is no reason 
 why Massachusetts — even with its small area and its large inter- 
 ests in manufacturing — may not have the very best type of 
 agriculture. There is no reason why the Massachusetts farmer 
 may not hold up for this Commonwealth the ideal that every 
 acre of Massachusetts soil shall be put to its best use. If that 
 use is pasture, or if it is growing chickens, or if it is the apple 
 orchards on these splendid hillsides, or if it is cranberries on 
 the Cape, or if it is glass farming, it is still agriculture, and it 
 may be, and I believe it is going to be, the very highest form 
 of agriculture. When I go back West where I came from, they 
 make fun of New England agriculture. I tell them, "But look 
 at our glass farming." "Oh, yes, but that isn't agriculture." 
 It is the very highest form of agriculture. For a man to take 
 a bushel of soil and make it yield almost as much (this is only 
 a comparison, I do not vouch for the exactness of the com- 
 parison), — make a bushel of soil here yield almost as much as 
 an acre of soil will out there, it is the very highest type of agri- 
 culture. And that is the type that lies before our Massachu- 
 setts farmers if they will meet the situation. But that type of 
 agriculture, my friends, spells "Education." 
 
 I believe in New England agriculture. Even now agricult- 
 ure in New England plays a larger part in our industrial life 
 than we are accustomed to think. We are proud of the manu- 
 facturing pre-eminence of New England. Our textile industry 
 is our largest single industry, and New England is at the very 
 head in this line of industry; and yet, so far as the figures 
 reveal the truth, they indicate that there is more money in- 
 vested in New England agriculture to-day than there is capital 
 invested in the textile industry in New England. I under- 
 stand that the cotton-goods manufacturing of Massachusetts 
 is our largest single industry, and we all think of it as one of 
 great moment. We guard it jealously, and we look after the 
 
29 
 
 education of those who are to be engaged in it. Yet in Mas- 
 sachusetts, which is dominantly industrial and only incidentally 
 agricultural, they tell us that the value of the farms in Mas- 
 sachusetts is greater than the value of the money invested in 
 cotton-goods manufacturing. According to the census of 1900 
 the capital invested in agriculture in Massachusetts was equal 
 to the capital invested in all the manufacturing enterprises of 
 the city of Boston. Even now agriculture plays a larger part 
 here than many of us suppose. 
 
 And then there is the rural life of Massachusetts and New 
 England. What a contribution it has made to church and to 
 state and to college and to business! And I do not believe 
 myself that that contribution is to cease. It should not cease. 
 We ought not to leave out from the elements of our civilization 
 those forces that come out from the soil. 
 
 I go to Boston very frequently from Amherst, and on every 
 trip I pass by that wonderful engineering work and that beauti- 
 ful piece of water, this reservoir down below us, and I think of 
 its application to this very question. The city of Boston is 
 anxious for its water supply, and at great expense it builds up 
 among the hills a splendid reservoir to collect the pure waters 
 of these hills and keep them pure until they come down to the 
 people of the city of Boston. Is it not the concern of the people 
 of Boston, of the people of every city, of the people of our country 
 as a whole, that the sources of human life, the sources of the city 
 supply of human life in these hill towns, shall also be kept pure 
 and strong? It seems to me so. 
 
 And these are the great reasons, — for the importance of 
 agriculture as an industry at the present, and its promising im- 
 portance for the future, — the reasons why this new school- 
 house in Petersham is so significant. 
 
 The agricultural college has stood for years for a type of 
 education. It has stood for the advancement of a certain voca- 
 tion. It has stood also — and is trying to stand to-day even 
 more fully — for a leadership not only along the lines of building 
 up agriculture as an industry, but for leadership in all that 
 goes to make country life worth while, prosperous and intellect- 
 ual and happy. And it has to-day in this school a new ally. 
 
 It seems to me that the people of Petersham cannot afford 
 
30 
 
 to think of any other course for the future than to make sure 
 that this new school, this new departure, shall always be in the 
 front rank as an agricultural high school. You are the pioneers 
 in New England among public schools in this enterprise, and you 
 cannot afford to relinquish the proud title which you have won 
 by your far-sightedness, by the generosity of your citizens. 
 
 But I would like to think that this school, while it stands for 
 agriculture, while it shows the young people the value of this 
 type of education, whether they go into the farming vocation or 
 not, while it bring them into contact with the things of out-of- 
 doors and inculcates within them the love of nature and the 
 love of the men and the women who do the common work of 
 the world, — I would like to think also that this school, in some 
 fashion, may become a real leader in this community. 
 
 I know nothing about the agricultural conditions of this 
 town, I do not know what the future promises for them; but 
 it seems to me that Petersham, with this new leader in its midst 
 ought to be able to demonstrate that New England agriculture, 
 that Massachusetts agriculture, has a great future before it, not 
 merely because it promises to grow more and constantly more 
 valuable things out of the soil, but because through means of 
 education, through a larger outlook upon life, it can make the 
 country a better place to live in than it has ever been before. 
 
 I believe that the future of agriculture, even in the Common- 
 wealth of Massachusetts, is going to be greater than the past. 
 Indeed, I believe that the golden age of New England agriculture 
 is before us. And it seems to me that this beautiful school- 
 house in Petersham, with all its equipment, with all that it 
 stands for, if it is wisely directed, is kept to its task, is managed 
 on the broadest and most liberal lines, will be regarded as the 
 prophet of the new era in agriculture in Massachusetts. 
 
 The day's proceedings ended with the singing of "America" 
 — the audience little dreaming how soon the old church, with 
 its Paul Revere hall, was to become ashes, and the voice of 
 President Wright to be heard no more. 
 
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