462 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE 



lions of dollars. By tlie terras of the second Morrill Bill the College re- 

 ceives this year |22,()()(), while from the Hatch Experiment Station Bill 

 she receives $15,000, all of this in addition to about 144,000 received from 

 (he interest of the sales of lands under the first Morrill Endowment Act. 



We are a part of the fruits of that lavish expenditure of money, and 

 while we find ourselves today gathered here asking ourselves if our ex- 

 penditure of time and money has paid us, it might be well to ask if it 

 has paid the State and the Nation, who have been so liberal to us? It is- 

 time that we as friends and beneficiaries of this new education should 

 fairly and honestly face the problem of the present status and future use- 

 fulness of land grant colleges. 



Today the College asks but little of the State legislature. Last year 

 its revenues, aside from anything that came from the taxpayers of this 

 State, amounted to six per cent interest on nearly one and one-half 

 millions of dollars. An institution today with a million and a half of 

 interest bearing bonds is indeed rich, and should do its alloted work 

 well. Our College has gained a vantage where her feet are firmly planted, 

 and she may calmly and proudly search for her mission. When in the 

 past she has kept in touch with the spirit of her founders to furnish an 

 education of the head and hand to the young man of small means, this 

 College has succeeded, but it is useless, and actually contrary to the 

 spirit upon which it is founded, for a land grant college to compete with 

 a university. W^hen they have been yoked together, or when the land 

 grant college has been swallowed by the unaversity, a perversion of 

 funds has taken place which is little less than criminal. 



Fortunately in this State we are unhampered, and Michigan has a 

 chance to lead as she did forty years ago. Unless I misinterpret the 

 spirit in which these appropriations were given, the object of the land 

 grant college should be, not to make professional men or farmers, or 

 mechanics or mechanical engineers, or to compete in any way with the 

 university; but to me it seems as though its objects should be to take the 

 young men and young women just as they come from the common schools 

 nprl o-ive them four years, more or less, of training for the head and the 

 hand, with the aid of the best appliances and the best teachers that 

 modern scientific methods can produce. So that they shall go out into the 

 world better equipped for its duties, and better citizens. We cannot bear 

 down too hard on this latter side of the education. For assuredly the 

 government has a right to expect such institutions will send forth men 

 filled with jtatriotism and ready for the active duties of citizenship. If at 

 the end of that course they see fit to go on farther, the university is open 

 to them. 



To my mind we have been too ambitious. We have trained in the past 

 some splendid men who have gone out into positions of trust and hoi; or. 

 But unless they had a more extended training in some institution more 

 in the nature of a university, they have fought their way ud against 

 tremendous odds. When the later Morrill Act and the Hatch Experi- 

 ment Station Bill gave a new impetus to land grant colleges there arose 

 a great demand for teachers in these schools in the various branches of 

 scientific work. The graduates of our College were ready and willing; 

 many of them had had experience in teaching, and they secured a fair 

 share of the places. These men have many of them done good work, but 

 they have been seriously hampered by the idea that they were graduates 



