Page 300

300     WISCONSIN STATE -AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
riflee that very few, comparatively, in the rural distriets are 
able to meet. This idea of intermediate schools has been 
also brought out very elearly by the paper which was read 
here to-night by Mr. Beach, and he has given you warning, 
and it pleases me exceedingly to hear him say it, that if you 
enter upon this work., if you do what Mr. Hoard told you 
last night you ought to do, stir the intellectual aetivities of 
the rural population in this state from center to eireumfer- 
ence, so animate it with ambition and with force that it 
shall be an irrepressible power in every.community. Mr. 
Beach has given you notice that not one agricultural col- 
lege will answer at all for any length of time. Ten of them-, 
twenty of them, perhaps; the more we have of them the 
better, but this we do need, we are conscious of this to-day., 
these intermediate schools, from which the ordinary child 
that has not perhaps a elassical edueation or an edueation. 
that will fit him for the practiee of the professions in life-, 
shall have advantages which will give him extended culture 
and with that eulture extended power. Last spring, Prof. 
Henry of the state university.. had a course of study for the 
ao,-ricultural department of the university, and I seanned 
their eireular with a great deal of interest. I discovered 
that if that course of study was earried out, and the propo- 
sition therein made was enforced, that it was possible for 
the graduates of a good, common school to enter the state 
.university in this agricultural course, and to take up a line 
of study that should be in his diredt interest to pursue as a 
farmer, and also at the same time have open before hini 
other courses of siudy which would enable him to gather 
self-instruction and self-culture in other branches of study 
if he might desire it. I believe that that was a wise meas- 
ure, but I understand that by som.e arrangernent or by some 
rule it has been determined that that is impractieable, that 
this preparatory study must be had before pupils can enter 
the other classes of the univer-sity, ýi9md that it is insisted 
that that is a necessitY of the condition of the growth and 
of the very existence of the university itself. That may be 
so. The authorities that have that institution in charge are