83 



A claxise of the act of 1890. however, limits the curriculum to specified sub- 

 jects : but it is understood that in the Senate that chiuse was very earnestly 

 debated and the original restrictive clause was thrown out. It, was, however, 

 restored in the House, it is said, under pressure of the National Grange, and 

 was finally accepted by the Senate in its present form. I bring this to your 

 attention to indicate, what seems to me to be true, that this clause was 

 prompted by an effort not to determine the grade of instruction, but to deter- 

 mine that these institutions to be further endowed and sui)ported should be 

 turned toward the industries of life rather than toward the liberal arts and 

 professions of life in the ordinary sense of the term. 



What ought you and I to do to-day with all this freedom? 



In Connecticut we have two sets of boys who ought to come to our institu- 

 tion — boys who have been in the connnon schools and who have had no high 

 schools within reach, and boys who have been in the high schools, and who are 

 going to some sort of college, who by taste and inheritance ought to come to 

 our institution. We had only a four-year cour.se. We had a little agriculture 

 in every year, and a considerable of the elements of liberal education in all the 

 years. The result was that the boy coming from the high school had to go 

 back, if he wanted to get our agricultural instruction, and start at the same 

 point where the boy from the common school would start. You see what differ- 

 ence there was in the matter of training and mental ability. It seems to me the 

 mental ability a man has counts for vastly more than the subjects he studies. 

 We do not care where a man gets his brain power. If he has got it and can 

 apply it to agriculture and mechanic arts we are ready to receive it and put it 

 to work. But we wanted to put in the proper place the man who had not 

 developed his brain. So we hit on this scheme. I asked a committee of the 

 faculty to work out a two years' cour.se of preparation for farming. They 

 worked out a two years' course in farming open to graduates of high schools. 

 Our curriculum as it stands to-day divides our studies into three groups of two 

 years each. We offer attractive courses to boys who have a limited amount of 

 education, and to boys who find it in their power to get considerable education. 



In addition to this, in special subjects we give short courses varying from 

 ten days to a year. We have found since we introduced these cour.ses that we 

 have come closer to our natural constituency : we have the respect of the i)rac- 

 tieal farmer as we never had it before, and our short courses have fed our long 

 courses. Besides our short-course work in the winter, we have been holding 

 a suuuner school for teachers and others, in which we have limited our subjects 

 to nature and country life, and we li.ive had three very successful sessions. 



It seems to me there is a good field fur the land-grant college, and that each 

 State may and ought to organize its land-grant college so as to meet the needs 

 of its peculiar constituents, and that anything and everything which it is found 

 'practical to teach ^^ ithin these limits should be t.aught. 



I have not spoken of extension work. I do not believe extension work is a 

 proper use of the land-grant college money. 1'hat is, we hold that anything you 

 can teach at the college in connection with your college courses is appropriate 

 and may be paid for out of your land-grant college money. We do not do any 

 extension work .at the expense of the L'ederal Treasury. Of course we under- 

 stand that each State college is perfectly free to use the money it receives from 

 its own legislature and its own State treasurer for any purpose the State may 

 designate. 



W. A. IIenkv, of Wisconsin. President Stimson is entirely right when he says 

 that the Grange was back of those limitations in the Morrill Act of 1890. The 

 argument was that many of the colleges had diverted nuich of the first appro- 

 priation to purposes not closely connected with instruction in agriculture and 



