AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 463 



of a first class college, and needed no farther training. The real fact, 

 and the one which they soon discovered, was that with their preparation 

 on entering this College they could not in four years have mastered any- 

 thing, and what they most needed was thorough, systematic, persistent 

 study in their chosen branch of science. They have done well and they 

 have reflected honor on the M. A. C. But they have done it at the fearful 

 cost of days and nights of double work. Witnesseth the tragedy of an 

 Ingersoll, wonderfully successful, a born teacher and leader, but always 

 striving to make up for deficiencies of early education, until body and 

 mind break down. 



The success of our College in sending out teachers and engineers of 

 ability has to a certain extent blinded us to the true end and object of 

 a land grant college. It has seemed to us glory enough if we pointed to 

 teachers in nearly every state of the Union. If we but stop to think 

 this is but an incident in our mission, it is a thing to be proud of, but is 

 it the thing of which we ought to be most proud? 



As a college, over five thousand .^oung men have entered our doors. 

 Something over seven hundred have graduated. Why have the four 

 thousand dropped out? Has the course been planned for the many that 

 come, or for the few that are chosen? Of the seven hundred who have 

 graduated, how many would have rec<-4ved their education at the uni- 

 versity? Of the many who have dropped out, how many would have 

 remained if the school had been peculiarly designed to help and to keep 

 them? These are questions well worth asking. 



It is openly and freely stated that with our magnificent plant and 

 equipment, and the vast amount of money spent annually, we ought to 

 have a thousand students. There is no doubt but that this is true. We 

 can only have this number when w^e come into closer touch with the sons 

 and daughters of men who are earning small sums of money. 



The ideal of every ambitious student and tear-her is to increase the 

 requirements of his college, and to add to the course of study, even 

 though many drop by the wayside, and only the strong and brilliant few 

 graduate. The college gains a higher rank among educational institu- 

 tions. I would call a halt along this line. I would lower rather than 

 raise the requirements; I would lower rather than raise the course of 

 study; I would discourage the graduation, from a four years' course, of 

 men fitted to take at once the first prizes; I would even make the require- 

 ment so low that no earnest young man or woman should go away be- 

 cause the course was too difficult. Educators recognize that many youths 

 (ran learn from things who cannot learn from books. An institution 

 founded for the purposes set forth in the Morrill Endowment Act is 

 doing its work when it provides for this class. Expenses should be simpli- 

 fied and reduced, so that any earnest young man of good health can earn 

 the money to go through. 



Do you know that the expenses ha^'e increased during the past ten 

 or twenty years? It takes more dollars to graduate a young man now 

 than it did then. And there are those who are free to talk of the greater 

 purchasing power of the dollar, but that is another story. The course 

 has been extended and the price raised, that is to say, we have com6 

 nearer to the standard of a university, and farther from the reach of the 

 sons and daughters of that grand industrial class spoken of in the Morrill 

 Acts, and in whose ranks the brain and brawn and moral fiber of this 

 country exists. 



