No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 169 



MR. HALL: Mr. Chairman, I second the motion. 

 The question being on the motion it was agreed to. 



MR. HALL: Mr. Chairman, there is a matter in the way of an 

 unofficial statement in regard to the tact that there is to be new 

 appointments at State College that will amount nearly to re-organi 

 zation. It is almost absolutely certain that the Board of Trus- 

 tees will be obliged to agree upon some one to take Ur. Atherton's 

 place. It is also stated that Dr. Armsby is to be given the charge 

 of the Bureau of Animal Nutrition and there will be a new man ap- 

 pointed as Dean of the School of Agriculture and in charge of the 

 Experiment Station. 



Now all the members of the Board know that the Act that created 

 and provided for the land grants for colleges, of which Pennsylvania 

 State College is one, specified that it did so, that they might give in- 

 struction in agriculture and the mechanic arts. Those of us who 

 have visited the State College and given any thought to the matter, 

 must have been struck with the disproportion of development be- 

 tween the primary and the secondary mission of the college. The 



secondary mission — the instruction in the mechanic arts has been 



brought to a very satisfactory state, but the primary mission — 

 the instruction in agriculture — seems not to have reached so satis- 

 factory a state. Now it appears to me that one of the things that 

 this Board ought to do, is to express its opinion as to who should 

 succeed Dr. Armsby and Dr. Atherton in these positions. Now it 

 would seem to me that it would be a good thing for the Board to 

 urge upon the Board of Trustees that those positions be filled by 

 men who are graduates of some agricultural industrial college, and 

 when I say that, mean graduates of some college that has developed 

 along the lines that the Act evidently intended they should de- 

 velop. 



Now all of us would deplore very much any reorganization of that 

 college that would lower the standard of the department of Me- 

 chanic Arts, but all of us would hail with joy any reorganization 

 there which would bring agriculture up on a level or even put it in 

 advance of the department of Mechanic Arts, and it seems to me 

 that we ought to recommend men for these two positions whose 

 education and training and subsequent achievements are such as 

 to ensure their being in sympathy with agriculture, so that those 

 of us who visit the college may not find, as we do now, that the col- 

 lege spirit is not in favor of agriculture. If we had men in the two 

 positions named it seems to me that that proportion and that spirit 

 might be changed so that the college would be known just as widely 

 and just as favorably for the strength of its department of agricul- 

 ture, as it is now for its department of Mechanic Arts. 



I do not know that it would be right to commit the Board to it 

 but it seems to me that a resolution asking the trustees to fill those 

 two positions v.ith graduates from some agricultural, industrial col- 

 lege would now be timely. 



The CHAIR: Are there any more remarks upon the resolution? 



MR. BEARDSLEE: Mr. Chairman, I do not think there is aiiy 

 risk to run at all in this matter, and that the proper thing to do is 

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