He has served on this board in the past to the credit of himself and the agricultural people of the state.

He has been a successful farmer and stock raiser in one of the best, if not the best, agricultural counties in this old Buckeye State. His location is such that it makes him convenient to attend all the agricultural meetings, which each and every member should attend. He is also in touch with our agricultural school, as well as our agricultural state fair.

I nominate Honorable T. E. Cromley, of Pickaway county. (Applause.)

President Carpenter: Mr. Cromley, of Pickaway county, has been placed in nomination.

Are there other nominations?

Mr. J. W. Crowl, of Champaign county: At the request and on behalf of Clark county, I wish to place in nomination Mr. T. L. Calvert, to succeed himself. (Loud applause.)

Mr. A. J. Clark, of Guernsey county: Being one of the representatives of the eastern part of the state, I do want to second the nomination of the Honorable T. E. Cromley. I believe that I can say, with due respect to all the members, knowing him as I do, and as we all know him, he is known in every town and hamlet of the state. He has been one of the most valuable members of this board, and I hope he will be elected by acclamation.

Dr. H. M. Brown, of Highland county: Mr. Chairman: It gives me a great deal of pleasure to endorse Mr. Cromley, whose nomination I arise to second. He has given satisfaction to the people of the state in general.

Speaking from an exhibitor's standpoint, it gives me extreme pleasure to most cordially second the nomination. Having had considerable experience as an exhibitor with this Board and its individual members, it is, I assure you, one of the most pleasant duties that I perform in most heartily seconding his nomination.

Mr. G. G. Grieve, of Greene county: On behalf of the agricultural society of Greene county, I heartily second the nomination of Mr. T. L. Calvert.

President Carpenter: Gentlemen, are there any other nominations? If there are no further nominations this part of the program will close, and the secretary will prepare the ballots to be voted this afternoon. And thereupon a recess was taken until 2:00 o'clock p. m. of same

day.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON SESSION, January 12, 1905.

The meeting was called to order at 2:07 p. m. by President Carpenter, who said: We will now be favored with music by the quartette.

A song, "Water Lilies," was sung by the Cecilian Ladies' Quartette. (Applause.)

President Carpenter: We will now have an address on "Agricultural Education," by Dr. W. O. Thompson, President of The Ohio State University. (Loud and uproarious applause, during which was given one of the O. S. U. yells.)

ADDRESS BY DR. W. O. THOMPSON.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I appreciate more than you can the welcome that is accorded a man who stands and speaks for agricultural education, and I am very happy to stand in that capacity this afternoon, for I am to give you a rapid view of what I have seen in the matter of agricultural education in the last few weeks, and make some remarks upon what I have seen and perhaps suggest a few comparisons of what you might see if you made an investigation of what is in Ohio. This is made not for the purpose of speaking in any way disparagingly of what we are or what we have, but of suggesting the conditions under which we are living in the hope that we can do something to make them better, for I take it that all are agreed that progress is the watchword of the best citizens of Ohio. Just this week I have been in Iowa. The earlier weeks I have been in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

There are several types of education in the matter of agriculture, or perhaps we may say there are several methods by which the people are endeavoring to meet the problem of education in agriculture. We in Ohio and in some of the other states, have a four years' course in agriculture. So far as my observation goes the concensus of opinion is that these four-year courses in agriculture ought to be sustained. They ought to be more liberally patronizedin all probabilities will be more liberally patronized in the future.

I do not mean to say by this that any course of agriculture holding for a period of four years is a complete or a final course, but that it will be substantially the same ten years from now that it is now. Not a single college course of any sort in the country has remained stationary for ten years, but there has been no great revolution in these years, so that if you were to compare the four years' course in Iowa, or Minnesota, or in Wisconsin, with that in Ohio, you would find them substantially the same in that regard, for they have all modeled themselves after a general pattern suggested by a study of this matter given by the Association of American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations.

In addition to this four years' course a number of these colleges have tried so-called short courses. At the Ohio State University in this agricultural college we have a short course covering a period of two years. In Iowa they have abandoned that two years' course because they said it stood in the way of the four years' course. In Minnesota they are still maintaining it as they are doing in some other places.

The aim of this two years' course in agriculture in these colleges, generally speaking, is to provide instruction largely in the practical side of agriculture,

without so much emphasis upon the academic side of education, in the hope that this two years' course of instruction will largely increase the efficiency of the young man who leaves college at that period to return to the farm.

In some cases these two years' courses have been so adjusted that if a boy got the fever the first or second year, he might go on without much loss of time and complete the four years' course. It has thus served a double purposebeing a kind of a stepping stone to the farm, and a stepping stone to more education, either of which would be good in itself. I don't care to dwell much upon that feature of it because the limited time I am to have would preclude that.

Some considerable agitation has been seen in the agricultural press recently concerning agricultural edcation in Ohio, and that was my reason for taking this theme.

It has appeared in our agricultural papers-and the intimations are there very clearly set forth-that there is something not quite right in the course of instruction. I thoroughly agree with the spirit of this kind of criticism, and moreover I wish to be understood distinctly as welcoming that sort of criticism for the college of agriculture, for we are not wiser, perhaps, than others in our generation. I only want to put this statement forth, that as a result of this criticism we shall try to co-operate, not only with the people who suggest changes, but with all the friends of agricultural education elsewhere, in doing whatever else we can do in order to meet more completely the needs of agricultural education in Ohio.

I am thoroughly persuaded that we are not reaching in Ohio as many young men and young women as ought to be reached and as need to be reached. I am thoroughly persuaded that a great many young men have made a mistake in that regard and have not given the serious attention to agricultural educa tion that they ought to have given to it, and that would have been greatly to their benefit personally and to their profit as producers. I believe, therefore, that we need in Ohio a pretty general shaking up; I believe that we need to have the gospel of agricultural education preached in every school district in this State; that it ought to be announced and thought about and talked about in every farmer's home in this state. I believe there are things that can be done for these boys and girls that will be good for them; that will be good for agriculture in Ohio; that will be good for the cause of education, and that it will be good for civilization itself. There are conditions in Ohio that make me say just these things. Whether we can import from Iowa, or from Wisconsin, or from Minnesota, a system and plant it down in Ohio and give it equal success here is a proposition that I can not quite make sure of. That we can import some of their ideas and adapt them to Ohio needs is to my mind an easier and a clearer proposition.

Let me tell you, therefore, briefly, what I have seen in some of these places. To go to the extreme northwest, to Minnesota, which has in addition to its four year courses, some short courses. In the four year courses at Minnesota, with a total of over three thousand students, they have less than fifty in their college of agriculture, while we have more than two hundred. That is to say the demand for a four year course in agricultural education is much stronger here than there.

However, they have more than five hundred students now in their school of agriculture, and this school of agriculture corresponds about in its general outline to what might be called an agricultural high school. That is to say they do a very limited amount of academic work; they do a large amount of the

so-called practical work in agriculture, and the academic work they do has been adapted as they believe and as I also believe, to the needs of farmer boys.

For illustration, I went into the class of arithmetic. I spent an hour and a half talking with the professor of farm mathematics. A great many people think there is no such thing as farm mathematics; mathematics is mathematics, and that is all there is to it in the minds of some men. But we know full well that there is such a thing as engineering mathematics; we know very well that we teach mathematics to engineers with a totally different purpose from that with which we teach an ordinary student of liberal arts, because mathematics to the engineer is a tool that he uses every day, whereas to the ordinary student of liberal arts it goes in as a disciplinarian study chiefly.

In this matter of farm mathematics there wasn't any text book, and this man has worked one out in manuscript form-a text book for certain problems which he has been trying in the class room-and he found this: If he gave a boy a problem that related to some actual experience upon the farm, by working out these arithmetical problems in farm equations he at once enlisted the interest of that boy, and he made him familiar with the mathematical calculations. For example, if he were hauling manure from the yard he would have given to him a formula and the problem would be to work out just what the actual value was of the load when it was deposited on the field.

They butcher a number of animals that are consumed by the students at the table. They get the weight of these animals as they are on foot; they butcher them, cut them up and weigh them again. The question of percentage is never taught as percentage, but the proportion of dressed beef to the beef on foot is a problem discussed every time. With such questions they are learning percentage in some other name. The professor tells me that they are learning to deal with the problems met upon the farm. It may be a question of a load of wood, a load of dry, hickory wood; how many cubic feet of wood have you on that wagon? How much is there of it? Those are the kinds of problems they take. Of course, a large number of problems in what we call dry measure and liquid measure have been worked out in this book. I do not propose to narrate the whole book; I am only giving these as illustrations, but the whole problem is worked out with reference to the ordinary farm operations.

The experience of those men is to this effect: That that kind of farm mathematics, that kind of arithmetic to a farmer's boy enlists his interest and he never has any trouble in dealing with them. That of itself has been an advantage.

On the other hand, what is the experience when they have girls? The girls take no interest in these problems. The professor says: "I never want another farmer's daughter in my class." The girls do not take any interest in the problems that are of interest to the boy, and they propose to separate the boys and girls.

Agricultural chemistry is taught much in the same way, working out problems that come up in every day farm experience.

They have their shops there in which they teach the boy iron work; how to do the ordinary iron work that is done on the farm. They teach him never to make a chain, but always buy it; but if you break it, always mend it yourself. They teach the repair of ordinary tools on the farm, repairing that will save your time.

They have a shop for wood working where these boys are taught the ordinary operations of wood working, such as you would need on a farm-ordinary repair or the building of an ordinary shed, or the building of a silo, or some such structure. In that connection they have the study of farm mechanics in

which they are taught drawing and farın architecture; and they are able to prepare their own plans and to build the buildings on the farm on which they live. In other words, under farm mechanics is included drawing and the general practical problems of the ordinary farm. They insist upon it that these boys should know these things especially. They take a very small amount of academic work, but they undertake to teach the practical things of every day farming.

In connection with this the question of stock judging was a very active question. Minnesota has an experiment station and they have a large force of men there, at the school. They operate the school only for six months of the year, and it is not quite so expensive as it would be to operate six months elsewhere. But they are embarrassed, for if they have a good man it is difficult to expect him to work six months and be idle six months. In the winter they operate the schools and then go back on the farm for six months. They operate during the winter months. It is a difficult problem to secure teachers for so short a term, except at great cost.

That seems to be the idea that has taken possession of the school of agriculture there, and they have succeeded in working out in Minnesota a school of over five hundred. This school does not require any large amount of preparation for entrance; it doesn't pretend to give a degree at the close of it and it doesn't pretend to be a college of agriculture, but it takes the place of the ordinary high school in the education of the young man or the young woman.

Wisconsin has an experiment slightly different. It has a winter course and that course is in operation now. It runs through the winter. They do no academic work, absolutely none. The day that I spent in that school I walked around with Professor Henry, whom many of you know. In that place I found a man with a couple of hogs in a pen lecturing to a group of boys on the hog industry, as a portion of the work in animal husbandry; in another pen I found another man lecturing to a group of boys, using cattle; I went out to another place and here were boys using sheep as their subject; at another place they spent time learning how to splice ropes, and to do the different things that are of convenience and necessity on a farm. Here also they had their shops for iron work and wood work. Everything at the Wisconsin school is practical. so-called as distinguished from the academic. They have about five hundred in that school right now going on in this course of agriculture; they gather up from the state of Wisconsin a large number of young men.

They, too, have found a very small percentage of their students in the college of agriculture. They are not graduating very many men with what me may term the scientific attainments in agriculture.

Now, in Iowa, they have abandoned their two year courses and they have an unique thing in agricultural education, different from that which I found anywhere else. They have a two weeks' course in agriculture every winter and it is in practice and closes Friday of this week. They began last week-Monday. In this two weeks' course they confine themselves to two things-one is animal husbandry and the other is corn judging. They expect to add the element dairying; they are doing a little work this year, elementary.

They have a stock pavilion in two stories. The upper story is given over to the corn judging and the lower story to cattle. They start those people at eight o'clock in the morning, in sections. In the corn judging room, for example there were about two hundred and fifty men at work when I was present, and in the stock room below about the same number. At ten o'clock the people upstairs go down and the people down stairs go up, and those upstairs study