Studies in the South and West, with Comments on Canada

by Charles Dudley Warner

The general impression of Milwaukee is that it is a city of much wealth and a great deal of comfort, with a settled, almost conservative feeling, like an Eastern city, and charming, cultivated social life, with the grace and beauty that are common in American society anywhere. I think the men generally would be called well-looking, robust, of the quiet, assured manner of an old community. The women seen on the street and In the shops are of good physique and good color and average good looks, without anything startling in the way of beauty or elegance. I speak of the general aspect of the town, and I mention the well-to-do physical condition because it contradicts the English prophecy of a physical decadence in the West, owing to the stimulating climate and the restless pursuit of wealth. On the train to Madison (the line runs through a beautiful country) one might have fancied that he was on a local New England train: the same plain, good sort of people, and in abundance the well-looking, domestic sort of young women.

Madison is a great contrast to Milwaukee. Although it is the political and educational centre, has the Capitol and the State University, and a population of about 15,000, it is like a large village, with the village habits and friendliness. On elevated, hilly ground, between two charming lakes, it has an almost unrivalled situation, and is likely to possess, in the progress of years and the accumulation of wealth, the picturesqueness and beauty that travellers ascribe to Stockholm. With the hills of the town, the gracefully curving shores of the lakes and their pointed bays, the gentle elevations beyond the lakes, and the capacity of these two bodies of water as pleasure resorts, with elegant music pavilions and fleets of boats for the sail and the oar—why do we not take a hint from the painted Venetian sail?—there is no limit to what may be expected in the way of refined beauty of Madison in the summer, if it remains a city of education and of laws, and does not get up a “boom,” and set up factories, and blacken all the landscape with coal smoke!

The centre of the town is a big square, pleasantly tree-planted, so large that the facing rows of shops and houses have a remote and dwarfed appearance, and in the middle of it is the great pillared State-house, American style. The town itself is one of unpretentious, comfortable houses, some of them with elegant interiors, having plenty of books and the spoils of foreign travel. In one of them, the old-fashioned but entirely charming mansion of Governor Fairchild, I cannot refrain from saying, is a collection which, so far as I know, is unique in the world—a collection to which the helmet of Don Quixote gives a certain flavor; it is of barbers’ basins, of all ages and countries.

Wisconsin is working out its educational ideas on an intelligent system, and one that may be expected to demonstrate the full value of the popular method—I mean a more intimate connection of the university with the life of the people than exists elsewhere. What effect this will have upon the higher education in the ultimate civilization of the State is a question of serious and curious interest. Unless the experience of the ages is misleading, the tendency of the “practical” in all education is a downward and material one, and the highest civilization must continue to depend upon a pure scholarship, and upon what are called abstract ideas. Even so practical a man as Socrates found the natural sciences inadequate to the inner needs of the soul. “I thought,” he says, “as I have failed in the contemplation of true existence (by means of the sciences), I ought to be careful that I did not lose the eye of the soul, as people may injure their bodily eye by gazing on the sun during an eclipse.... That occurred to me, and I was afraid that my soul might be blinded altogether if I looked at things with my eyes, or tried by the help of the senses to apprehend them. And I thought I had better have recourse to ideas, and seek in them the truth of existence.” The intimate union of the university with the life of the people is a most desirable object, if the university does not descend and lose its high character in the process.

The graded school system of the State is vigorous, all working up to the University. This is a State institution, and the State is fairly liberal to it, so far as practical education is concerned. It has a magnificent new Science building, and will have excellent shops and machinery for the sciences (especially the applied) and the mechanic arts. The system is elective. A small per cent, of the students take Greek, a larger number Latin, French, and German, but the University is largely devoted to science. In all the departments, including law, there are about six hundred students, of whom above one hundred are girls. There seems to be no doubt about co-education as a practical matter in the conduct of the college, and as a desirable thing for women. The girls are good students, and usually take more than half the highest honors on the marking scale. Notwithstanding the testimony of the marks, however, the boys say that the girls don’t “know” as much as they do about things generally, and they (the boys) have no doubt of their ability to pass the girls either in scholarship or practical affairs in the struggle of life. The idea seems to be that the girls are serious in education only up to a certain point, and that marriage will practically end the rivalry.

The distinguishing thing, however, about the State University is its vital connection with the farmers and the agricultural interests. I do not refer to the agricultural department, which it has in common with many colleges, nor to the special short agricultural course of three months in the winter, intended to give farmers’ boys, who enter it without examination or other connection with the University, the most available agricultural information in the briefest time, the intention being not to educate boys away from a taste for farming but to make them better farmers. The students must be not less than sixteen years old, and have a common-school education. During the term of twelve weeks they have lectures by the professors and recitations on practical and theoretical agriculture, on elementary and agricultural chemistry, on elemental botany, with laboratory practice, and on the anatomy of our domestic animals and the treatment of their common diseases. But what I wish to call special attention to is the connection of the University with the farmers’ institutes.

A special Act of the Legislature, drawn by a lawyer, Mr. C. E. Estabrook, authorized the farmers’ institutes, and placed them under the control of the regents of the University, who have the power to select a State superintendent to control them. A committee of three of the regents has special charge of the institutes. Thus the farmers are brought into direct relation with the University, and while, as a prospectus says, they are not actually non-resident students of the University, they receive information and instruction directly from it. The State appropriates twelve thousand dollars a year to this work, which pays the salaries of Mr. W. H. Morrison, the superintendent, to whose tact and energy the success of the institutes is largely due, and his assistants, and enables him to pay the expenses of specialists and agriculturists who can instruct the farmers and wisely direct the discussions at the meetings. By reason of this complete organization, which penetrates every part of the State, subjects of most advantage are considered, and time is not wasted in merely amateur debates.

I know of no other State where a like system of popular instruction on a vital and universal interest of the State, directed by the highest educational authority, is so perfectly organized and carried on with such unity of purpose and detail of administration; no other in which the farmer is brought systematically into such direct relations to the university. In the current year there have been held eighty-two farmers’ institutes in forty-five counties. The list of practical topics discussed is 279, and in this service have been engaged one hundred and seven workers, thirty-one of whom are specialists from other States. This is an “agricultural college,” on a grand scale, brought to the homes of the people. The meetings are managed by local committees in such a way as to evoke local pride, interest, and talent. I will mention some of the topics that were thoroughly discussed at one of the institutes: clover as a fertilizer; recuperative agriculture; bee-keeping; taking care of the little things about the house and farm; the education for farmers’ daughters; the whole economy of sheep husbandry; egg production; poultry; the value of thought and application in farming; horses to breed for the farm and market; breeding and management of swine; mixed farming; grain-raising; assessment and collection of taxes; does knowledge pay? (with illustrations of money made by knowledge of the market); breeding and care of cattle, with expert testimony as to the best sorts of cows; points in corn culture; full discussion of small-fruit culture; butter-making as a line art; the daily; our country roads; agricultural education. So, during the winter, every topic that concerns the well-being of the home, the prolit of the farm, the moral welfare of the people and their prosperity, was intelligently discussed, with audiences fully awake to the value of this practical and applied education. Some of the best of these discussions are printed and widely distributed. Most of them are full of wise details in the way of thrift and money-making, but I am glad to see that the meetings also consider the truth that as much care should be given to the rearing of boys and girls as of calves and colts, and that brains are as necessary in farming as in any other occupation.

As these farmers’ institutes are conducted, I do not know any influence comparable to them in waking up the farmers to think, to inquire into new and improved methods, and to see in what real prosperity consists. With prosperity, as a rule, the farmer and his family are conservative, law-keeping, church-going, good citizens. The little appropriation of twelve thousand dollars has already returned to the State a hundred-fold financially and a thousand-fold in general intelligence.

I have spoken of the habit in Minnesota and Wisconsin of depending mostly upon one crop—that of spring wheat—and the disasters from this single reliance in bad years. Hard lessons are beginning to teach the advantage of mixed farming and stockraising. In this change the farmers’ institutes of Wisconsin have been potent. As one observer says, “They have produced a revolution in the mode of farming, raising crops, and caring for stock.” The farmers have been enabled to protect themselves against the effects of drought and other evils. Taking the advice of the institute in 1886, the farmers planted 50,000 acres of ensilage corn, which took the place of the short hay crop caused by the drought. This provision saved thousands of dollars’ worth of stock in several counties. From all over the State comes the testimony of farmers as to the good results of the institute work, like this: “Several thousand dollars’ worth of improved stock have been brought in. Creameries and cheese-factories have been established and well supported. Farmers are no longer raising grain exclusively as heretofore. Our hill-sides are covered with clover. Our farmers are encouraged to labor anew. A new era of prosperity in our State dates from the farmers’ institutes.”