Page:The Wisconsin idea (IA cu31924032449252).pdf/151

 grown up rapidly. Agriculture has been placed in the high schools, manual training has been provided, state inspection and regulation have been secured and a high order of educational enterprise has resulted. A complete industrial program, calling for a separate body to control industrial education and making the most complete plan for an educational system which has ever been considered or introduced in any state of this country, was organized by the legislature in its 1911 session.

The university extension division is the great, powerful link which connects every part of the university with the individual in the state. It must be remembered that this has a potent influence upon the public and the state and that the influence of the university reaches out into the homes of the state through this extension department by means of its correspondence courses, debates, etc., more completely than in any other state. Thus the state through its generous appropriations to this institution has created a powerful instrument of knowledge, not only on public questions but scientific ones as well.

Agriculture

The prosperous agricultural condition in this state to-day stands as the monument to a great genius, William A. Henry, formerly Dean of the School of agriculture, University of Wisconsin.