' 
 
Agriculture 
 
 The Master Science. 
 
 ADDRESS BY 
 
 L. H. KERRICK, 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE DEDICATION OF THE NEW 
 AGRICULTURAL BUILDING OF THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. 
 
 Champaign, Illinois, May 21, 1901. 
 
 
 BLOOMINGTON, ILLINOIS, 
 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 

 
Agriculture the Master Science. 
 
 I F I should say that agriculture is the first — the 
 greatest — the most honorable business of the 
 world, I would only be saying- ag-ain what the best 
 and wisest men of every ag-e have said before. 
 But a great number of people do not so reg-ard agri- 
 culture; they are prone to look upon it as a useful, 
 ' possibly as a necessary business, albeit a very sim- 
 r' ; pie one, suited to the ability and uncultivated tastes 
 c^of plain people. Almost any other vocation they 
 i esteem more honorable, and preferable to tilling- the 
 ^ "ground and tending- the herd. This mistaken atti- 
 "b tude toward agriculture is not universal, but it has 
 ' been and is still far too general. In the common 
 7 ; mind agriculture is the inferior — other callings the 
 £ superior. The largest case in all history of “cart 
 p before the horse” is that one wherein so great a part 
 of mankind have so persistently put agriculture to 
 the rear — in the less honorable place, while other 
 vocations are put to the front in the position of 
 honor. 
 
 In the whole hook-up of our civilization this 
 “wrong end to” position of things is strongly in 
 evidence. This common underestimation of agri- 
 
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 10173 
 
culture, and the common aversion or distaste for 
 agricultural pursuits, and the general trend of peo- 
 ple and institutions away from the farm have long 
 been noted and deplored by observing and right 
 thinking men. 
 
 They have profoundly affected all social, polit- 
 ical and economic relations and conditions. They 
 have upset the proper balance of city and rural pop- 
 ulation. There are too few people on the farms, 
 too many in the cities. There are not enough peo- 
 ple on the farm to do the work well, while in the 
 cit} T there are two or three times as many as are 
 needed to do the work there. There is boundless 
 room and unlimited living employment in the coun- 
 try, while there is crowding and poverty and strife 
 and strikes in the city, for lack of living employ- 
 ment. 
 
 A few years ago there was a great strike on in 
 Chicago. I do not remember what precipitated it — 
 no matter, at bottom the cause of all strikes is too 
 many people needing the same job. During this 
 particular strike the storm for a while centered 
 about some grain elevators. Thousands of men 
 threatened to pull down or break in the elevators 
 and help themselves to the wheat. At that time 
 those elevators were filled with the cheapest wheat 
 ever raised in the world; but there were so many 
 people in Chicago who had no business there — no 
 living business, that they could not earn enough to 
 
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buy enough to eat of the cheapest bread the world 
 ever had. 
 
 This pulling away from the farms could not af- 
 fect every other condition and institution and leave 
 our greatest institution, our schools, unaffected. 
 
 And what a country of schools is this! Who 
 can count our schools? They are like the stars 
 which no man can number. But our schools, big, 
 little and medium, public and private, have been 
 dominated in their organization and in their teach- 
 ing by this same, anything but farming, spirit. 
 They have taught our farmers’ boys and girls about 
 everything under the sun except those very things 
 they need and must know to make their work and 
 business attractive, satisfying, successful. 
 
 The attitude of the schools toward agriculture 
 has been something like this. Anybody can farm. 
 You do not have to learn how to farm. You just 
 know it without having to learn. There is not 
 much to learn about it anyway. There is no sci- 
 ence, no art about farming. You do not go to 
 school to know how to farm better; you do not have 
 to. You go to school to learn how to do something 
 else, so you may not have to farm. Only those peo- 
 ple who cannot do something else work at farming. 
 Strange! All this is passing strange, since if we 
 but think for a moment we know that had it not 
 been for the farming which went before them, never 
 a book would have been written, never a school 
 house built on the earth. 
 
 3 
 
Agriculture is the science of sciences, the art of 
 arts. 
 
 When every other art and science shall have 
 been thought and wrought out to its utmost limit, 
 the science and practice of agriculture will still pre- 
 sent boundless unexplored fields for work and 
 research and reward, wherein every faculty of mind 
 and body with which man is endowed may find the 
 fullest, the most satisfying, the most inspiring ex- 
 ercise and employment. 
 
 Do not misunderstand me. I say nothing 
 against our schools. They are good. They do 
 their work well. That such a system of public and 
 private schools as ours with its mighty teaching 
 force and its vast material equipment should have 
 been evolved in so short a period of time is a matter 
 to excite our wonder and to compel our highest ad- 
 miration. 
 
 For zeal, for self-sacrifice, for untiring labors in 
 behalf of our youth, that they may become intelli- 
 gent, worthy men and women and patriotic citizens, 
 I say of our whole great array of teachers, from the 
 presidents of our universities and colleges to the 
 humbler but not less useful district school teachers, 
 there live no better, nobler, more helpful men and 
 women than they. 
 
 But just as earnestly I say that our schools and 
 our school teachers have been nearly all looking one 
 way, and that way has been away from the farm. 
 Is it anybody’s fault? No; it is everybody’s fault. 
 
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It is the colossal fault of our time and our genera- 
 tion, to underestimate the dignity, the beauty, the 
 profit and the honor of farming- and farm life. 
 
 This wrong- attitude of our schools toward agri- 
 culture has of course tended strong-ly to draw young- 
 people from farm life to professional life. The 
 schools have been turning- out too many doctors, 
 too many lawyers, too many professors. There is 
 no need for them all, but they have been taken too 
 often from the farm, where there is need of them. 
 The professors have rather the better of it because 
 they can g-o on helping- to turn out more doctors 
 and more lawyers and more professors. 
 
 To say the so-called learned professions are full, 
 pressed down and running- over, is only hinting- at 
 their actual condition. Something over a year ag*o 
 I read in a Chicago paper an account of graduating 
 exercises which took place at the Chicago Univer- 
 sity. Let me quote you verbatim a part of Presi- 
 dent Harper’s address to the graduates, as it was 
 reported: 
 
 “You who are now entering the world will find 
 that poverty will be the strongest opponent to over- 
 come. You who are entering life as lawyers need 
 only to look at the papers to-day to find that the 
 average lawyer does not earn his salt. Those who 
 will become physicians will find that their only 
 companion for a few years to come will be the wolf 
 at the door; while those who go forth to teach need 
 only to witness the struggles of the school teachers 
 
 5 
 
in this city. The school board is beset with howls 
 and wails for an increase of salaries.” 
 
 This in that great and rich and growing me- 
 tropolis, Chicago, a city affording as great or 
 greater and more opportunities for men and women 
 trained for the learned professions than any other 
 city; yet even there the prospect held out to those 
 graduates by the president was years of starvation. 
 If some other fellows had not the strength to fast 
 as long as these graduates then they might eventu- 
 ally get the other fellows’ places. 
 
 The first duty of an educated, able-bodied man 
 is to make his own living. The man who is not in 
 some way, at some point, doing an amount of the 
 world’s necessary work equal to that required for the 
 support of one man, is a burden on society. 
 
 Do any of you fear that President Draper or 
 Dean Davenport will ever say to a class graduating 
 from this agricultural college: Gentlemen: — You are 
 going out to the farms. You have not mastered the 
 whole of agricultural science, that will not be done 
 by any living or yet to live, but you have done your 
 work well in the college and you are well equipped 
 for your business; however, I feel obliged to say to 
 you that poverty will be the strongest opponent you 
 will have to overcome. The average farmer is not 
 earning his salt — that is, for his personal consump- 
 tion, mind you, let alone the cattle and horse crit- 
 ters. The only companion you will have for some 
 years to come will be the wolf at the door. * * * 
 
 6 
 
/ 
 
 I just as much expect to read of such a speech 
 as that having been made here to a class graduating 
 from this agricultural college as I expect to find my- 
 self to-morrow morning sitting on some distant star, 
 reading that last night the cables of gravitation 
 parted down here and the whole planetary outfit fell 
 to everlasting smashup. 
 
 Thirty-four years ago there was organized here 
 an industrial university. Not a university of the 
 general sort but of another sort, a new kind of uni- 
 versity. A university differing in its organization — 
 differing in its leading studies and in its aims and 
 purposes from those already established in many 
 parts of the country. The courses of study in the 
 colleges and universities existing when this new 
 university was organized were adapted only to fit 
 men for the so-called learned professions, law, med- 
 icine, etc. In this new university the leading stud- 
 ies were to be those related to agriculture and the 
 mechanic arts. Whereas the other universities tend- 
 ed to withdraw their students from the pursuits of 
 industry, this new university would aim by linking 
 learning more closely to labor and by bringing the 
 light of science more fully to the aid of the produc- 
 tive arts, to enamor the sons and the daughters of 
 the farmer and the artisan with their pursuits. 
 There is no law in Illinois establishing a university 
 of the general or older sort. There never has been 
 such a law. There is a law establishing an indus- 
 trial university. If this university has any legal ex- 
 
 7 
 
istence or standing*, it is as an industrial university. 
 By the intention of its founders, by its org*anic law, 
 by its lawfully authorized courses of study, by the 
 will of the people of Illinois, it is an industrial uni- 
 versity, not less, not more. 
 
 In his address, delivered on the occasion of the 
 inaug-uration of the Illinois Industrial University, 
 that great man, Dr. Newton Bateman, said: “What, 
 then, is the grand distinguishing* feature, purpose, 
 hope of this university? In my view it is to form a 
 closer alliance between labor and learning*— be- 
 tween science and the manual arts, between man 
 and nature, between the human soul and God, as 
 seen in and revealed through his works. 
 
 “It is to endeavor so to wed the intellect and 
 hearts of the students we educate to the matchless 
 attractions of rural and industrial life, that they 
 will with their whole soul prefer and choose that 
 life and consecrate to it the results of skill and power 
 that may here be gained. These I hold to be the 
 aims of this university. And we hope to attain 
 them, not by a less extensive and thorough course 
 of instruction than is given in other universities, 
 but by a somewhat different course and more espe- 
 cially by emphasizing from the beginning to the end 
 those studies and sciences which look away from 
 literary and professional life and towards the pur- 
 suits of the agriculturist and the artisan.” 
 
 Congress in 1862 made a liberal grant of land 
 scrip to each state of the union for the endowment, 
 
 8 
 
support, and maintenance of at least one college in 
 the several states accepting the benefits of the grant, 
 whose leading object should be to teach such branch- 
 es of learning as related to agriculture and the me- 
 chanic arts, without excluding other scientific and 
 classical studies and including military tactics, in 
 order to promote the liberal and practical education 
 of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and 
 professions of life. 
 
 This act of congress was the origin of our uni- 
 versity. The legislature of Illinois, by an act pro- 
 viding for the organization and maintenance of the 
 Illinois Industrial University, re-enacted the act of 
 congress in identical words. 
 
 The state of Illinois might have organized and 
 provided for the maintenance of a university of the 
 established or general sort, having colleges of law, 
 medicine, etc., etc., including a college of agricul- 
 ture and mechanic arts, but she did not and has not. 
 The perfectly obvious intent of the legislature was 
 to establish a peculiar university, contradistin- 
 guished from that other kind, in that its leading 
 studies should relate to agriculture and mechanic 
 arts, other classical and scientific studies being per- 
 missible when and to the extent that they might 
 subserve the single great purpose, namely: the 
 thorough and liberal and complete education of 
 the farmer and the artisan; this end and purpose 
 being accomplished, the whole purpose of the uni- 
 versity is accomplished. It was deemed by the 
 
 9 
 
founders that there were enough of the universities 
 of the other kind and that more were not needed. 
 If no need in ’67 of establishing- a university of the 
 g-eneral sort, what need now can there be when with- 
 in the borders of our state there is building- by pri- 
 vate beneficence, without charge to any tax-payer, 
 what will with scarcely a doubt soon become the 
 most completely equipped, the most comprehensive 
 in its round of learning and the most richly endowed 
 university of the general sort in the world. 
 
 About three years ago when this university had 
 been here more than thirty years, when in all there 
 had been expended upon it $4,000,000 or $5,000,000, 
 the Illinois Farmers’ Institute appointed a commit- 
 tee to visit the university and see how it was faring 
 with agriculture here. 
 
 The committee made its visit and investigation 
 and reported that they found an agricultural plant 
 worth about $7,000 — $7,000! Shades of the found- 
 ers! Excuse us farmers for what we could not help 
 and forgive us for what we could help but did not. 
 
 But my friends I doubt very much if Turner and 
 Bateman and Gregory and their co-laborers would 
 have any harsh words for us if they could communi- 
 icate with us. They saw how the educational wind 
 was blowing from the farm to the town, from agri- 
 cultural to professional life, before they went. It 
 was only a breeze in their day, but may be from 
 their spirit homes they have seen that breeze in- 
 crease to a blizzard sweeping things toward the 
 
 10 
 
Agricultural building, university of Illinois. 
 
town and toward the occupations of the town, as 
 that other kind of blizzard sweeps the snows of the 
 plain upon the hamlet in its path. 
 
 I am ready to believe that those good men, if 
 they thought we could hear them, instead of chid- 
 ing us would say, boys, you “done noble” even to 
 hold down your little cow barn in such a gust as that. 
 
 I have not much to say about the $7,000 plant. 
 When the farmers heard about it, a movement to 
 right things, general, intelligent, determined, 
 united, irresistible, was begun. This great agricul- 
 tural building is one of the fruits of that movement. 
 The generous appropriation by the last legislature 
 for better equipment of the plant and for other pur- 
 poses of the college, is another fruit of that move- 
 ment. There will be other and perennial crops of 
 good fruit which that movement will bear. 
 
 Farmers are conservative; they are not easily 
 moved individually and are harder to move en masse,, 
 but when they move other things will be moved 
 that need moving. If the university ship has been 
 turned from its right course, little or much, or if it 
 has been turned right about and headed the wrong 
 way, the farmers will surely swing her around again 
 and send her on her appointed way. They know her 
 mission; it was clearly mapped out from the begin- 
 ning, and knowing it they will see to it that she 
 have a chance to accomplish that mission. 
 
 Lest some think otherwise let me say I have not 
 spoken a word in any spirit of complaining — not a 
 
 11 
 
word intended as an arraignment of anybody for 
 anything that may have been done or left undone 
 in or concerning this university. 
 
 There has been lack of information and conse- 
 quent misunderstanding and disagreement among 
 the people as to the true and lawful character, scope 
 and purpose of our university, I have deemed it my 
 right, perhaps my duty as a citizen and a farmer, to 
 set forth here those purposes. 
 
 And let no one infer from any utterance of mine 
 that I take an unfavorable or gloomy view of mat- 
 ters and events in general. I believe that the pre- 
 ponderance of human intention and human effort is 
 toward the good. I believe that the prevailing 
 course and tendency of human institutions is to- 
 ward the better. They may travel sometimes ob- 
 liquely — zigzag — wrong end foremost — upside 
 down — or at times seem to go backwards, but alto- 
 gether they get onward and upward. 
 
 Good things — better things — the best things, 
 come not at once, but by evolution, step by step, 
 from imperfection to excellence. 
 
 Agriculture is the peculiar science; in its be- 
 ginnings simple indeed — simplest of all; in its high- 
 er development we shall see it growing complex, 
 comprehensive, drawing to its aid, assimilating and 
 rendering subservient all sciences and becoming in 
 its fullest development the master science. 
 
 Since the children of men however simple and 
 unlearned must live and maintain themselves on the 
 
 12 
 
earth, and since they could live only upon the prod- 
 ucts of the tilled field, it was necessary that they be 
 able to provide the means of sustaining- life by the 
 simplest method of field culture. 
 
 That kind providence which cares for all living 
 thing's so ordered his laws that the field by the 
 rudest implements and by untaug-ht methods could 
 be made to yield the necessities of life. 
 
 But since we live by agriculture we have been 
 wont to look upon it simply as a means of living-. 
 He who finds in his vocation only the means of liv- 
 ing- becomes a joyless drudge and his vocation stag- 
 nant drudgery. 
 
 May we not see in this the reason why myriads 
 have tired of farming and have turned away from 
 the farm to other pursuits and professions. And in 
 this turning away of so many from the farm to other 
 pursuits and professions may we not find and see the 
 cause of that marvelous development of other arts 
 and sciences which so distinguishes our time? I do 
 not doubt it. The excessive interest in these, the 
 excessive number engaged in them and the excess of 
 energy expended upon them, could have no other re- 
 sult but to push their development to an amazing 
 degree of perfection. 
 
 But now on every hand we note the signs of 
 another turning, a returning to agricultural pur- 
 suits. Other sciences and other arts are ripe now 
 to serve their highest purpose in the development 
 of the master science, agriculture. The professions 
 
 13 
 
are full — crowded as we have seen. They no longer 
 pay, to put it short, but that is not all nor most im- 
 portant; men and women conscious of power to aid 
 in the world’s needed work and inspired by sublime 
 desire and ambition to add by their labors some- 
 thing to the world’s comfort, happiness, and better- 
 ment, disdain to waste their trained powers where 
 not needed. If place, success and competence are to 
 be gained for themselves in professional life, it must 
 too often come by displacing and defeating others. 
 
 With the condition of the unskilled laborer and 
 the artisan in the city we are familiar. Living em- 
 ployment is uncertain; there are too many. The 
 mechanic for self-preservation is compelled to limit 
 the number of apprentices in his own craft, even to 
 the exclusion of his own son. Professional men are 
 hesitating to bring up their sons in their own call- 
 ing. How is it with trade and commerce? There 
 is war between individuals and corporations for 
 trade, of which there is not enough to go round, and 
 nations that once fought for liberty and honor are 
 now ready to fight for trade. 
 
 The way out of it all is to the farm. To the 
 farm is the place to go now, and to farm is the thing 
 to do. People see it; not only plain men now, but 
 schooled, educated, learned men see it, and the more 
 they know the better they see it. Necessity may be 
 the ointment that is opening their eyes, but they 
 see it all the same. To my young friends who 
 question me as to the most promising field for 
 
 c 
 
 V U |||^j 
 
 J ' 
 
 14 
 
effort now, I answer without hesitation, the corn 
 field. 
 
 We are about to return — we are returning- to 
 agriculture. We are taking- another step in the 
 evolution of better things for mankind. 
 
 To the half employed, to the disappointed, dis- 
 contented, striving, struggling millions in other 
 over-crowded pursuits, agriculture says come unto 
 me and I will give you employment; I will give you 
 food and clothing; I will give you homes; I will 
 give you contentment and honor; I will give you 
 peace. 
 
 But we are returning to a new agriculture, an 
 agriculture lighted and glorified by science. To the 
 new agriculture the agricultural college and experi- 
 ment station will be the main gateway. 
 
 The agricultural college and experiment sta- 
 tion is one of the wisest conceptions of this or of 
 any age. 
 
 It should not be regarded as merely a help to 
 agriculture or an aid, however valuable; such an es- 
 timate falls short of the truth. It is a necessary, 
 an indispensable agent in the development of a bet- 
 ter and more profitable and more engaging agricul- 
 ture. The individual farmer cannot experiment prof- 
 itably. Agricultural experiments for the most part 
 require some years for their completion. There 
 must be parallel experiments under varying condi- 
 tions. Exact records must be preserved. Expensive 
 apparatus is often required. I need not recount the 
 
 15 
 
obstacles to successful experimentation by individu- 
 al farmers; they are numerous and practically insur- 
 mountable. 
 
 If for no other reason, a college or association 
 of some kind is necessary, because experiments if 
 left dependent upon the life and health and inclina- 
 tion of private persons would almost certainly fail. 
 
 Although comparatively new institutions, col- 
 leges of agriculture have abundantly proved their 
 value. 
 
 To their credit stand already discoveries of in- 
 calculable value to mankind — discoveries which in 
 their nature would not and could not have been 
 made outside the Agricultural College. Where could 
 the thought have been born, except in the environ- 
 ment of the Agricultural College, that our greatest 
 product — corn — might be changed in the propor- 
 tions of its chemical constituents? Even if the idea 
 had occurred to some farmer of contemplative mind, 
 what could he do with it? How could the change 
 be effected? Could such changes be made as would 
 widen the uses and increase the value of corn? 
 
 Without the College and Experiment Station, 
 these questions would have to go unsolved. In this, 
 our Agricultural College, a man has thought, be- 
 lieved, proved that the chemical constituents of corn 
 may be so changed in their proportions as to make 
 of it almost a balanced or complete food for our do_ 
 mestic animals. There is no calculating the value 
 of this discovery. All intelligent feeders have known 
 
 16 
 
that our great food crop was deficient in the protein 
 necessary for normal growth and development of our 
 domestic animals. This protein we must supply at 
 any cost. Which of us and when, would have 
 thought and learned how to breed an increased pro- 
 portion of protein into our corn. Not only this, he 
 has proved that for various other special uses corn 
 may be so bred as to largely increase its value and 
 selling price for those uses. 
 
 I believe that this discovery alone — that the 
 proportions of the chemical constituents of corn can 
 be changed, and the more valuable parts materially 
 increased, will be worth in dollars and cents to 
 the farmers of Illinois a sum beside which all that 
 has been or will be appropriated to our Agricultural 
 College will appear insignificant. My estimate of 
 the value of Professor Hopkins’ discovery is not of 
 course capable of mathematical proof, but I have 
 intended to speak of his discovery in reasonable and 
 probable terms, and I believe that I have. 
 
 Without doubt a reasonable amount of public 
 money judiciously expended on our Agricultural 
 College will return an hundred fold to the common 
 good. 
 
 We are met here to dedicate this great building, 
 the largest agricultural college building, I believe, 
 in the world. It is consistent — we are the greatest 
 agricultural community, and this building stands in 
 the center of the largest tract of the most product- 
 ive land comprised in any single state. It will be 
 
 17 
 
well equipped. We have a corps of instructors, 
 many of them already renowned for eminent service 
 to agriculture; all are learned and skilled in their 
 art, and devoted to it. 
 
 To the great art — the greatest — we dedicate 
 our splendid building. 
 
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