1902.] THE CONNECTICUT AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. 1 23 



tion, and always felt the lack of it in his own case. He was 

 one of the plain people. Furthermore, as President Harris 

 of our American Association of Agricultural Colleges and 

 Experiment Stations has just reminded us in his address at our 

 annual meeting in Washington, it is a significant fact that the 

 man who vetoed the first bill providing for the land-grant 

 colleges was a gentleman of the old classical school — Presi- 

 dent Buchanan — and it is also a significant fact that the man 

 who approved the measure in 1862 vvas the rail splitter, 

 Abraham Lincoln. We stand, therefore, for an education 

 which is down close to the people, and we stand also for an 

 education which will help to lift our students to the highest 

 positions among the people, or enable them to do their quota 

 of service in certain departments of respectable work. 



I wonder if you would not like to have all this impressed 

 on you a little more distinctly. I know when we are sitting 

 together as listeners a pelting rain or hail of figures may 

 be merely a source of annoyance; but since the matter is 

 so important, and since you have employed a man to take 

 note of what is said here, I would like to have appear in your 

 proceedings exactly what this education is that we offer. I 

 want you to know precisely the broad and useful kind it is. And 

 I wish you to know and remember the royal way in which 

 it has been and is supported by our national government 

 and by the State as a whole. 



The total number of land-grant colleges in 1900 was sixty- 

 five. Their income that year was a million and a quarter of 

 dollars, and this sum, mind you, was entirely exclusive of 

 two-thirds of a million dollars devoted to agricultural ex- 

 periment station work. There have been constant additions 

 to the funds, endowment, and equipment of these institutions. 

 These additions in 1900 amounted to three and a quarter 

 millions of dollars, in round numbers, including buildings, 

 machinery, and miscellaneous apparatus. The total number 

 of volumes in the libraries of those institutions in 1900 was 

 1,469,318. And the grand total of persons on the faculties 

 of the land-grant colleges a year ago was 2,855. Three thou- 

 sand one hundred and fourteen students, of an average 

 of twenty-one years and ten months, were graduated from 

 these institutions that year, these having been a part of a total 

 number of students in attendance that year of 39,505. There- 



