166 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



certainly has no college of agriculture to color his views in favor of that 

 institution. He paid me a visit last week and while he was there in the 

 space of about thirty hours — thirty to forty hours, because I went to St. 

 Louis with him — on the train he said to me not less than a half dozen 

 tiems — the thing seemed to be on his mind — he said to me again and again 

 at intervals between remarks : "The great institutions of learning in this 

 country are going to be a few heavily endowed private institutions and 

 those state universities which have in them colleges of agriculture." He 

 said, "they are going to be Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, Chicago and 

 some others" — I won't finish his enumeration because it was not very 

 long and he did not include some glorious names — "and the State Uni- 

 versities of California" (that is his greatest rival) "Minnesota, Missouri, 

 Illinois, Nebraska and Ohio, those are the institutions that have a great 

 future before them, and those state universities," said he, "in which the 

 college of agriculture is separated from the university will be compelled 

 in a few years to take second rank." Now, Mr. Jordan is not infallible — 

 I will remind you of that again, and Mr. Jesse is not any more infallible 

 than Mr. Jordan, but I believe firmly in the truth of his statement, so 

 far as state universities are concerned, those are going to distance the 

 others that have in them a college of agriculture and mechanic arts, and 

 I would not lose that college and the influence which it exerts — the 

 beneficent influence which it exerts upon the University for any considera- 

 tion which I could name to you here. 



The people do not begin to know what these colleges of agriculture 

 involve — they do not understand them at all, and the farmers understand 

 them generally about as well as many so-called educators. I want to 

 talk to you about the Hatch Act, which ought to be dear to every Mis- 

 sourian, because the author of that act was William H. Hatch who repre- 

 sented in Congress for many years, the first district of Missouri, and that 

 celebrated Hatch Act is named for the Missourian who introduced it in 

 Congress and fought it through the House. That act endows research. 

 It has set the seal of the Federal Government — the great seal — to the doc- 

 trine that public money belonging to the people can be legitimately used 

 for purposes of pure research, and almost every state in the Federal Union 

 by making appropriations to the Hatch Act has set the seal of the com- 

 monwealth to the doctrine that public money can be used for pure re- 

 search in agriculture. Now that people are quibbling on your street 

 corners and at your cross roads as to whether public money can be used 

 for the education of children, I want to point to the fact that the Federal 

 Government first, and almost every state in the Union has set its seal to 

 the truth of this doctrine that public money belonging to the people may 

 be used legitimately for purposes of pure research. I want to ask you 



