AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 439 



NEWER EDUCATION. 



MICHIGAN FOREMOST IN THE MODERN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. 



THE MICHIGAN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE ONE OP HER 



NOTABLE EXPERIMENTS. 



AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BY GEORGE WILLARD AT THE COMMEMORATION 

 OF THE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THAT INSTITUTION. 



Mr. President, Members of the State Board of Education, Faculty, 

 Alumni. Students of the Michigan Aji^ricultural College, and Citizens: 

 We commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the first endeavor to 

 occupy the field of higher education with an institution possessing the 

 peculiar features of the Michigan Agricultural College. As one who had 

 a part, however small, in launching an experiment which has led to such 

 gratifying results, it would be an exhibition of culpable indltference in 

 me not to appreciate the honor of an invitation to participate in this 

 event. It is t)ut just to also add that the hopes indulged when this College 

 was founded have been fully realized. The reality has even gone much 

 beyond the expectancy of at least many who projected and inaugurated 

 an undertaking which bore in many quarters the imi)utation of being 

 injudicious and hazardous. 



GENJ:RAL RETROSPECTIVE GLANCE. 



It must be remembered that this trial was made under quite different 

 conditions from those which exist now. History has been recording 

 marvelous changes since this College was established. Forty years in 

 this age of progress has measured an important cycle in the world, in 

 our country, and in our State. When this institution took its place as a 

 seat of learning in 1857, there was no cable communication with Europe 

 or other lands beyond the sea. France, now for a quarter of a century 

 a firmly established republic, was then under the second emi)ii'e; Italy 

 had not united the fragments into which she had been torn by the fac- 

 tions and the superstitions of the middle ages; Prussia, still a kingdom, 

 had several years to wait before expanding into the Imperial Germany 

 of our time ; Russia was then weighted with serfdom and shadowed with 

 her flag a portion of North America ; Japan and China were practically 

 outside of our American diplomacy; the most powerful nation of South 

 America had a monarch on a hereditary throne; and Canada had not 

 assumed to be the Dominion. In our country, California, then recently 

 acquired from Mexico and admitted into the Union, was the only state 

 west of the Missouri river; Buchanan had just entered upon his four 

 years' presidential term, and human slavery, by federal toleration, and 

 we may say compact, darkened a portion of our country and well nigh 

 dominated the whole; a great chapter in our national history was yet to 

 be delayed in its opening for four years and many of our chief national 



