366 STATE BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. 



LOCATION. 



A late directory of Lansing says : "When, in 1847, it became necessary for 

 the Legishiture permanently to locate the capitol of the State, so many places 

 were found competing for the honor that it was absolutely impossible to secure 

 an agreement for any. After a long and bitter contest, the present site of 

 Lansing was fixed upon as a sort of truce measure, the idea no doubt being 

 that when the excitement had quieted down somewhat, it would be easy to 

 secure the transfer to some more eligible point. But that time has never 

 come." But the citizens of Lansing never felt secure of the capitol until the 

 construction of the edifice was entered upon in 1871. 



Under a like spirit of compromise the Agricultural College was located 

 near Lansing. The House bill for the establishment of the college was lost 

 in 1855, as has been mentioned, after the proposal of many locations had been 

 made while on its final passage. The law, as enacted, committed the selection 

 of the site to the Executive Committee of the State Agricultural Society, with 

 these conditions: To be within ten miles of Lansing; not to cost over fifteen 

 dollars an acre, and to consist of not less than five hundred, nor more 

 than a thousand acres in one body. Such a location was not at all to the taste 

 of the friends of the college. They thought such an enterprise should have 

 been started on an improved form, in an easily accessible part of the State. 

 But here was a wilderness for a farm, near a place to be reached only by 

 staging over bad roads for more than twenty miles. 



It was not until 1869 that the location of the college was to be considered 

 settled. The president and some other officers of the university strongly advo- 

 cated making the college a department of the university, and locating it at 

 Ann Arbor. The Detroit press, and most of the newspapers of the southern 

 part of the State freely expressed the same views. 



In this contest the farmers of the State, however much they might begrudge 

 appropriations in war times, or prophesy that graduates would not go to farm- 

 ing, always objected to the uniting the Agricultural College to any other 

 institution. 



In 1865 (February 24) the executive committee of the State Agricultural 

 Society petitioned the Legislature to remove the college to some more eligible 

 locality. It was met by a counter memorial of Hon. H. G. Wells, of Kal- 

 amazoo, remonstrating against the removal. (1865, House Doc. No. 11.) 



In 1859, a bill, turning the college over to the University, was offered as a 

 substitute for an appropriation bill. 



In 1867, the subject of removal was advocated in the Detroit and in other 

 papers freely. The discussion of the location of the college did not cease 

 until 1869. In that year a carefully prepared bill for the transfer of the 

 college to Ann Arbor, as a department of the University, was introduced into 

 the Senate, and came up for action when the House bill appropriating $70,000 

 came up for concurrence from the House. On some side issue the bill for the 

 transfer was defeated, and the appropriation bill passed in the Senate by the 

 decisive vote of 22 to 8. 



An editorial in the State Kepublican, March 18, a Lansing paper, edited by 

 Stephen D. Bingham, under the heading of "End of a Ten Years' Fight," 

 spoke of the vote as ending forever a fight to destroy an institution, which a 

 democratic majority have provided for in the constitution, and a republican 

 majority have put into active operation. 

 _Mr. Bmgham adds: "To the warm friendship of Governors Bingham, 



