Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Ag Building [PAGE 19]

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17 luetics, all of whom were expected to be equally expert in the science of Agriculture as taught in those days. Since leaving the institution if 1 have made any success as a farmer it is due no doubt to the instruction in practical agriculture I received from the professor of literature and art of the best manner in which a hoe should be held in cutting down "Jimpson" weeds. If I have made a success in horticulture it is due to the instruction I received in picking and packing tomatoes on the site of where the Library Building now stands under the instruction of the professor of horticulture, one who from those primitive methods of instruction has advanced to a world-wide reputation as a bacteriologist and to the position of dean of the faculty. Our instruction in the class room consisted in having a chapter in, '* How Crops Grow*1 read and commented upon by the prolessor of agriculture. Wearisome hours were spent in this unprofitable work in reading books whose titles I remember if I have forgotten their contents. Thus it was that agriculture was taught in "ye" olden time, and the wonder was that agricultural education did not prove popular with the student. We can now see that the fault was not with the wonderful truths of nature but with the means and crude methods of their pre* scuta tion. All of this was but a beginning of a better system of instruction, a groping after better methods which have since taken the place of this mistaken and immature beginning. All of this is not offered in criticism, but as an illustration of what has been accomplished in the past third of a century in the development of agricultural education. Of the instructors of those days be it said that u they did the best they could," and the student of that day got the best there was at the time* Some of those instructors have since risen to prominence and occupy foremost positions of honor in the University—and have reputations in their profession* that are world-wide. Learning and Labor was the watchword then as now and from this humble beginning has come a system of instruction in the class room and field laboratory that has caused the building of this immense structure for carrying forward the cause of agricultural education* We welcome the dawn of a better day along this line, more intelligent methods, for investigation and instruction mean better methods in the treatment of our soils, our crops, and our live stock* It means a bettor home for the farmer* a