I sometimes feel that we, as a race, do not fully appreciate the importance of industrial education. I feel that the day is near at hand when the physical apparatus of civil education will play a larger part in the progress of the world than it has hitherto done. In other words, I firmly believe that the industrial victories are in the future and not in the past. We have done much and wrought many miracles, but the miracles are but evidences of possible powers rather than the high-tide marks of development. In my mind the possibilities of physical and scientific achievement are limitless, and beyond the compass of human conception. Look at iron alone. See what has been done with it in the last fifty years. See what you are able to do with it here in Tennessee. From it are made things dainty and things dangerous, carriages and cannon, spatula and spade, sword and pen, wheel, axle and rail, as well as screw, file, and saw. It is bound around the hull of ships and lifted into tower and steeple. It is drawn into wire, coiled into springs, woven into gauze, twisted into rope, and sharpened into needles. It is stretched into a web, finer by comparison than the gossamer of the morning along the bed of the ocean, and made to tick out the yesterday of Europe on the to-day of America. All of this variety of use has been made out of the stubbornness of metals by the sovereign touch of industrial and scientific education. There is inexhaustible promise in this development. It has brought, and is still bringing, the two great races closer together. These iron veins and arteries which interlock our cities and confederate our States do much to familiarize each race with the hopes and aspirations of the other, and to weave their histories into one harmonious contexture, as telegraphic messages fly instantaneously across them, and screaming trains rush back and forth like shuttles upon a mighty loom. When our fullest expectations shall have been fulfilled, both races will have the freest opportunity for the development of their varied capabilities, and, through mutual bonds of interest and affection and mutual bonds of sympathy and purpose, will rise the unmatched harmonies of a united people to the imperial accompaniment of two mighty oceans.