440 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE 



characters had hardly emerged from the level of common life. Lincoln 

 had acquired some fame, but had yet to win a greater distinction in the 

 debate with Douglass; Grant was farming near St. Louis; Garfield had 

 just left college; Blaine, a youthful journalist, was editing a newspaper 

 in Maine; Edison, the world's greatest electrician and the greatest in- 

 ventor of our age, was a poor ten-j'ear-old lad at Port Huron. Many 

 others comparatively obscure were to link their names with a lustrous 

 period to which future generations will turn for inspiration, and study 

 for example. 



MICHIGAN FORTY YEARS SINCE. 



But the changes made in this interval are still more strikingly shown 

 in the growth of our own State and the development of its educational 

 system. In 1857, Michigan lacked one year of reaching her majoriry. 

 Her admission into the Union dated back but twenty years. The Michi- 

 gan Agricultural College is just two-thirds as old as Michigan herself. 

 The State capital, at the date we are considering, had been at Lansing 

 but nine years. The State Normal School had just begun to send out its 

 first pupils. The first diplomas granted by the University had gathered 

 the dust of not quite a dozen years. The great chasm between the pri- 

 mary and grammar schools on the one hand, and the University on the 

 other, stood open to be filled by the graded and high school system in 

 the towns and cities. Michigan had then but one-fourth of her present 

 population, limited chiefly to the four or five southern tiers of counties. 

 At the opening of this institution, there were only four representati\es 

 in the legislature from the entire territory north of a line drawn through 

 Saginaw, Midland and Newaygo. Ten years after, it was my good for- 

 tune to have for colleague in the Michigan legislature, and on the com- 

 mittee of education, a distinguished member of the faculty of this Col- 

 lege, — I refer to Professor Kedzie, — one whose earnest work and scien- 

 tific research have made his name a household word in our own and other 

 lands; in the house also was another distinguished participant in this 

 day's proceedings, the Hon. William Ball, president of the State Agri- 

 cultural Society, always an untiring and efficient friend of the College. 

 In that legislature, as they will recall, the Traverse City member had a 

 constituency of thirteen counties, so sparsely settled was that part of the 

 State only thirty years ago. 



In 1857, the railways in Michigan were very few. They only comprised 

 the trunk lines of the Michigan Central, the Michigan Southern, and the 

 still uncompleted Detroit & Milwaukee. There was much sharp criticism 

 that the Agricultural College and its experimental farm had followed 

 the State capital into the northern wilderness, where there was no rail- 

 way access. It was a common remark that on this ground alone, the 

 legislature in selecting the site of the institution had perpetrated a great 

 folly, a charge that time made obsolete, long ago. 



REFORM IN COLLEGE EDUCATION. 



But all other changes put together are of less significance than the 

 advance made in the methods and purpose of collegiate education. Fo ty 

 years since, no college in the United States had been emancipated fr im 

 the idea that it must have a single unvarying curriculum and that no 



