Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Ag Building [PAGE 6]

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Limitation of time prevents giving this plan in full, but extracts from it will show that he had a clear and definite understanding- of the needs of our people. He said, "What do the industrial classes want? How can that want be supplied? 44 The first question may be answered in few words. They want, and they ought to have, the same facilities for understanding the true philosophy, the science, and the art of their several pursuits (their life business), and of efficiently applying existing knowledge thereto and widening its domain, which the professional classes have long enjoyed in their pursuits. Their first labor is, therefore, to supply a vacuum from fountains already full, and bring the living waters of knowledge within their reach. Their second is to help fill the fountains with still greater supplies. They desire to depress no institution, no class whatever; they only wish to elevate themselves and their pursuits to a position in society to which all men acknowledge they are justly entitled, and to which they also desire to aspire. How, then, can that want be supplied? 44 In answering this question I shall endeavor to present, with all possible frankness and clearness, the outline of impressions and convictions that have been gradually deepening in my own mind, for the past twenty years, and let them pass for whatever the true friends of the cause may think them worth. I answer first negatively, that this want can not be supplied by any of the existing institutions for the professional classes, nor by any incidental appendage attached to them as a mere secondary department. We need a university for the industrial classes in each of the states, with their consequent subordinate institutes and high schools in each of the counties and towns. The object of these institutes should be to apply existing knowledge directly and efficiently to all practical pursuits and professions in life, and to extend the boundaries of our present knowledge in all possible practical directions/9 Foreseeing the changes that would occur in agricultural methods, he went on to say: 44 There should be connected with such an institution, ia this state, a sufficient quantity of land of variable soils mad aspect, for all its needful annual experiments and processes in the great interests of agriculture and horticulture. Buildings of appropriate sise and construction for all its ordinary and