tural colleges in order to secure the passage of a bill through Congress to create them, Mr. Colman, not long after taking his seat as Commissioner, issued a call to the agricultural colleges in every state of the Union, requesting them to send delegates to a convention to be held in the department building in Washington, July 8, 1885. This invitation was accepted, all the colleges sending delegates, forming what history will proclaim on account of the great results achieved by it, one of the most important agricultural conventions ever held. By unanimous vote Mr. Colman was chosen president of the convention, and that part of his address relating to experiment stations was referred to a special committee, to which Mr. Colman was afterward added, and that committee finally reported the Experiment Station bill, which was afterwards passed by Congress and approved by the President, establishing experiment stations in every state in the Union. Mr. Colman thought that by enlisting the coöperation and active work of each of the agricultural colleges in the different states and of the senators and representatives in Congress, such a bill could be passed, and the result was a justification of his judgment. To secure the passage of a bill evolving the department into one of the great executive departments of the government was a much more difficult task. Mr. Colman knew that this could only be accomplished by the department meriting such promotion. It must be made worthy of such advancement. It would take too much space to give a history of the work accomplished by him, during his four years' term of service. We can only refer to a few of the many things secured under his administration. The first matter that attracted his attention was the stamping out of that dread disease among our cattle, known as contagious pleuropneumonia. It was found to exist in nearly twenty states of this Union. The disease is incurable, and the only way to extirpate it was to kill every affected animal and every animal that had been exposed to an affected one. Whole herds had to be slaughtered. Of course great opposition was raised to such action, but the heroic course was the only safe way to proceed. Millions of dollars were required to pay for slaughtered herds, but Congress freely made the proper appropriations, and this dread disease was practically eliminated from this country during his administration. The great fruit growing interests of the nation had been overlooked by the department, and one of his first acts was to take them. under consideration, and establish a division of pomology to look after and encourage the interests of the fruit growers in all parts of the United States. It has become one of the leading divisions of the department. Another of the important divisions established was that of vegetable pathology. Vegetable life is fully as subject to disease as animal life. Mildews, blights, rusts, smuts, moulds destroy millions of dollars worth of crops annually, and to guard against these diseases, and to give remedies for them, and to recommend such courses of cultivation as to avoid them, were the objects of Mr. Colman in starting this division. The division of ornithology and mammalogy was also established by him in order to secure information as to which varieties of birds and smaller animals as gophers, moles, minks, skunks, field mice, etc., were friends, and which were enemies to the farmer, and how their depredations might be prevented. The division of United States experiment stations was likewise established by him to take advantage of and utilize the vast fund of information to be secured at the various experiment stations of the different states of the Union, so as to make it available to those most needing it. But it was not only in establishing new divisions, but in greatly extending the scope of those that existed that commended his work to Congress and to the active workers in the cause of agricultural progress. It was this great advancement that secured the confidence of the members of Congress and caused them to aid in the rapid elevation of the department. It was, however, because of the establishment of experiment stations throughout the states of the Union, and the elevation of the department to one of the great executive departments of the government, during his administration, and his appointment as the first Secretary of Agriculture, that Mr. Colman will be longest and most widely known and remembered. So highly was his work appreciated that the Republic of France, through its Minister of Agriculture, conferred on him la croix d' Officier du Mérite Agricole, an honor which but few Americans have received. The University of Missouri at its late commencement exercises, in recognition of his services to the cause of agriculture, conferred on him the honorary degree of LL. D. The Missouri State Horticultural Society, at its last session, created the office of Honorary Vice-President, and elected him to fill it for life, as a slight tribute for what he had done in behalf of pomology. Such appreciation of his services during his lifetime cannot be otherwise than most agreeable to him. The official life of Mr. Colman referred to above covers but a small portion of his useful services to the farmer and stockman. Even a brief reference to the helpful services rendered the farmers of the United States by him in all the departments of rural life would fill several volumes. The man we meet to honor today has not only rendered efficient and acceptable services to the farmers of the United States in the various state and national positions to which he has been chosen with such hearty unanimity, but he has made an enviable reputation in the private walks of life as a good farmer and a successful breeder of the best types of registered live stock. This brief and hastily prepared sketch would be far from complete without some reference to his long and highly esteemed services as a director in various registration and other live stock organizations, state fairs, industrial expositions, world's fairs, etc., but the time at my command will not allow me to refer to them further. The distinguished honor bestowed on Mr Colman on this occasion by the conferring of the degree of doctor of agriculture by the great University of Illinois, has been well earned. His earnest and successful advocacy of the practice of the best methods in all that pertains to rural husbandry contained in the weekly messages he has sent through Colman's Rural World, to the progressive farmers of the Mississippi Valley for more than half a century is not the least of his great achievements. His writings and speeches have made him a leader in the campaign of education he has so ably conducted, and his influence for good in encouraging the residents of the farm to obtain the best results in the growing of crops, breeding of live stock and perfecting the high standard of rural citizenship by the education of their sons and daughters cannot be measured or overestimated. All the honors that have been conferred upon him have been most worthily bestowed and particularly that of doctor of agriculture conferred by this University. ASSEMBLY OF THE COLLEGE OF LAW INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION HONORABLE JACOB MCG. DICKINSON General Counsel of the Illinois Central Railroad Company, Chicago In 1904 there was organized in Chicago an International Arbitration Society, and Doctor Edmund J. James was elected as president and at present holds that office. Its purpose is to promote the policy of submitting international disputes to impartial courts of arbitration instead of the decision of the sword. Dr. James took the initiative in the propaganda in the Middle West to arouse and give expression to public sentiment for ratifying the treaties submitted by the President to the Senate at its last session, and it was through the enthusiastic and self-sacrificing efforts of him and his coworkers, whose zeal he aroused and constantly stimulated, that a large and representative meeting, held in Chicago, and presided over by Mr. Robert Lincoln, adopted resolutions favoring the extension by the government of the United States of the principle of international arbitration to all questions which cannot otherwise be brought to a pacific determination, and requesting their representatives in the United States Senate to exert their influence in behalf of such treaties and of their prompt consideration and approval by the Senate. The great office in which Dr. James has just been installed, will not withdraw him from the humanitarian work of endeavoring to realize the wish expressed by Washington of banishing from the earth war, which he denominated a "plague to mankind," but rather with increased prestige, will consecrate him anew to the noblest aspiration that can in respect of mundane affairs fill the mind and heart of man. At the Mohonk Lake conference of this year, attended by many of the most distinguished judges, jurists, diplomats, educators and clergymen of the nation, and presided over by the Honorable George Gray, on the motion of Dr. Daniel C. Gilman, it was unanimously resolved to suggest to the universities and colleges of the United States that concerted efforts be put forth to secure among undergraduates early and careful consideration of the principles of international arbitration. In compliment to your distinguished President, who is so conspicuously associated with this noble movement, and desiring, even though in an humble way, to collaborate with Dr. Gilman and his associates, I shall address you upon the subject of "International Arbitration." It is a product of the centuries, the resultant of all ideas and efforts for the substitution of some other tribunal than that of war for the adjustment of international affairs. Every theory of the doctrinaires, however impracticable for the times, which contained a germ of truth, as well as every real achievement, no matter how small in comparison with the total of international depravity which prevailed, has become a common heritage of humanity, an inspiration transmitted from age to age, advancing the thoughts and ideals of men and preparing them for international arbitration, which, entering upon a new era about 1815, has so progressed in our time that no one can doubt that it is the most powerful force now working upon the nations for the temporal happiness of mankind. International arbitration, as we know it, is no more a product of the last hundred years than was the Federal Constitution of 1789 a product of that year It is a flower of our time, but the roots of the plant which matured it found their beginnings in the soil of previous centuries. The Amphictyonic Council, the earliest institution established by independent states clothed with the office of preventing war between themselves, antedating authentic Greek history and enduring for more than fifteen hundred years; the arbitration of the rights of Adrastus and Amphiaraus to the Kingdom of Argos; the adjustment of the conflicting claims of the Athenians and the Megarians to Salamis; the plan of Henry IV to consolidate Europe into a practical federation of all the powers to be styled the "Christian Republic, with assurances for liberty of commerce and the establishment of a general council modeled upon that of the Amphictyons; the epochal work of Hugo Grotius, coming as one of the greatest boons to humanity at a period of its greatest agony, a fair flower of peace springing up in the midst of the carnage of the Thirty Years' War; the plan of William Penn, published in 1693-94 and entitled "An Essay Toward the Present and Future Peace of Europe by the Establishment of an European Dyet Parliament or Estates," which proposed that the sovereigns of Europe should meet by deputies in a "General Dyet" and establish rules of justice between themselves, that a "Sovereign Assembly" should adjust differences and coerce recalcitrant states, that a balance of power should be maintained by the distribution of votes, and that unwilling powers should be forced to adhesion; the "projet" of Abbé Saint Pierre in the eighteenth century, which embodied the essential principles of the plans of Henry IV and Penn; the scheme put forward by Bentham, 1780-1889, for an international tribunal to secure universal and perpetual peace, in which he proposed. a reduction of armaments and coercive powers, and as a last resource the enforcement of decrees by a contingent furnished by the several states, but, exalted above all other effective remedies, publicity, the promulgation of the decision and an appeal to the enlightened judgment |