The North Dakota Agricultural College directs its energies toward a system of education that at once affords all the means of culture and character building that collegiate courses of study can offer, yet without departing materially from giving special emphasis to those subjects which are directly related to the homes and the chief industry of the state.
The purpose is not only to increase production as a means of profit and to render helpful social service, but to make farm life and rural conditions so agreeable and satisfying that the choice of agricultural pursuits, on the part of educated young people, will prove as popular and inviting as that of any other industry or profession. This is not an impossibility. From an educational view-point no vocation exceeds agriculture in the material available for calling out the best there is in man, spiritually or intellectually. From a social view-point, the country represents the purest and most neighborly sympathies. And from an industrial view-point it is the state's support and should be the state's pride. North Dakota will expand in wealth and influence, therefore, in proportion as she throws wide open the door of agricultural opportunity for the young people of the state. This she can best accomplish by means of public education expressed in terms of rural life.
After twenty years of service as President of your Agricultural College, I find that my chief gratification comes from having associated daily with a loyal and dependable faculty and with so many clean, ambitious and sympathetic young men and women.
In you and the thousands of Agricultural College students scattered over this and adjoining states, many of them having already won enviable distinction by their public services, and all giving evidence of most exemplary citizenship, I not only take sincere pride but also find my chief reward. Others may scheme for wealth or fame, but for one at my time in life, I would not exchange the friendship of the Agricultural College student body, past and present, for earthly riches or personal honor.
I have implicit faith in the future of our Agricultural College as I have in this great agricultural state. Her broad acres are being rapidly occupied by a progressive and enterprising husbandry. Her cities and villages keep pace with her rural development. The dreams of the pioneers are fast becoming realities. The erstwhile home of the red man and the feeding ground of the bison, are destined soon to be thickly dotted over with luxurious farmsteads, made beautiful by the arts of civilization and prosperous by the skill and industry of a happy and contented rural population.
Students of the Agricultural College, your mission lies in this direction. Your influence upon the future development of this state will be as certain as it will be beneficient. The door of opportunity stands ajar, inviting you to enter and share the blessings that reward the industrious and reap the honors that crown the lives of those whose stewardship has been faithfully kept. May no temptation ever swerve you from loyalty to the cause which your alma mater represents. Too often the enemies of industrial freedom capture with the blandishments of vanity, the trusted leaders of reform.
Let your hearts, therefore, ever beat true for the best there may be in store for those whose sweat fertilizes the business of the state. The cause of the people should ever be your cause, and having received your education largely at their expense, spare not a generous service in return for the academic honors that now await you.