It will often happen
upon experimental farms that the circumstances do not correspond to the
condition of things among the farmers. The combined practical wisdom of
such associations must be very great; and I have but to refer to the
published minutes of the proceedings of the Concord Club to justify this
statement in its broadest sense. The meetings of such a club have all
the characteristics of a school of the highest order. Each member is at
the same time a teacher and a pupil. The meeting is to the farmer what
the court-room is to the lawyer, the hospital to the physician, and the
legislative assembly to the statesman.
Moot courts alone will not make skilful lawyers; the manikin is but an
indifferent teacher of anatomy; and we may safely say that no statesman
was ever made so by books, schools, and street discussions, without
actual experience in some department of government.
It is, of course, to be expected that an agricultural college would have
the means of making experiments; but each experiment could be made only
under a single set of circumstances, while the agency of local
societies, in connection with other parts of the plan that I have the
honor diffidently to present, would convert at once a county or a state
into an experimental farm for a given time and a given purpose. The
local club being always practical and never theoretical, dealing with
things always and never with signs, presenting only facts and never
conjectures, would, as a school for the young farmer, be quite equal,
and in some respects superior, to any that the government can establish.
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