AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 465 



that the university can turn out all the first class mechanical engineers 

 we need, is there no place for the young man who simply aspires to be an 

 •educated mechanic, or who don't know what he does want, but only 

 knows that he has large aptitude for things, and but small aptitude for 

 books? Our school can hardly take the place of the old apprentice sys- 

 tem, but it can do far more and better. It cannot hope to take a boy who 

 knows nothing of the farm and graduate him a successful farmer, but it 

 can furnish, as it has in the past, to a young man who expects to work 

 his fort}' or eighty acres, an opportunity to spend a few very profitable 

 years at a trifling cost aside from his time, and it can send him back to the 

 farm with health benefited, mind enriched, and spirit contented, a better 

 •citizen in every sense of the word. 



If the tendency of our College has been to increase expenses and en- 

 large the course, let us get back to cheapness and simplicity, and to less 

 ambitious tendencies. Not less thorough, but less advanced. 



Why can't a boy who likes farm work and wants to become a farmer 

 and a citizen, find an institution of this kind profitable to him, eA^en if 

 he cannot follow equations in algebra? 



Why not give an opi>ortunity to young men to learn all the details of 

 the dairv and creamerv business, even if thev can learn but little of 

 rhetoric? Why not send boys out fitted as good mechanics, even if they 

 can't adapt themselves to abstruse mathematics. The large attendance 

 -at private schools of meagre means and equipment proves that young 

 men of today need such an opportunity. Men who are in a position to 

 know tell me that it is difficult to get well trained mechanics today. If 

 a young man has been to college, he wants to be a superintendent, he 

 has been educated too far to work at the bench. To my mind there is 

 room for a*n institution which shall do this work without pretending to 

 send its young men out with the full equipment of university graduates. 

 Unless I am mistaken it is the province of these very land grant colleges 

 to do just this kind of work. 



Personally, I wish we could change the name of our college, broaden 

 it. Instead of the Michigan Agricultural College, I would like to have 

 it called *'The Michigan School of Applied Science." We received this 

 million of dollars from the federal government for a broader purpose 

 than a mere school of agriculture. We have been justly and unjustly 

 criticized by our farmer friends, who seem to think that they own the 

 "whole thing, when as a matter of fact there are others in that broad term, 

 industrial classes, and we ought to spend the same effort in trying to 

 instruct and help the sons and daughters of mechanics, and miners and 

 laborers of all kinds. We have been a little too narrow. Is it not possi- 

 ble that educationally we have advanced too rapidly? We have no great 

 secondary schools in this country. We seem to run to universities. Why 

 not make this school for Michigan, what Rugby and Harrow are for 

 England, a great intermediate school where the modern methods are 

 brought into prominence, and the discipline of things takes the place 

 of the discipline of Greek and Latin. It takes a far better teacher to 

 educate a young man in science than in language. A teacher who knows 

 but two years of Latin can impart fair instruction so far as he has gone. 

 But a man must be a master of science before he can give his pupils 

 any valuable discipline from his work. The rarest teacher is the first 

 <class kindergartner, no half knowledge will do here. The teacher must 

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