902 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



And for the pioneer institution it was an occasion for rejoicing 

 and congratulation and for tribute to the success of its honorable 

 career. Aside from delegates from colleges all over the Union, some 

 twenty-five hundred of its sons and daughters gathered to do it honor, 

 and the large meetings held in the tent provided for the occasion were 

 live with enthusiasm and reminiscence and ardent in appeal for the 

 l^reservation of old landmarks. 



It is a notable achievement to have taken a leading part in "• build- 

 ing new avenues along which knowledge is approaching more closely 

 to human needs; " and to do this in the face of unbelief and dogmatic 

 opposition has required a tenacious faith and an abiding courage. 

 In planning and conducting this celebration of its anniversary, the 

 Michigan Agricultural College has added to the debt of gratitiule 

 which all the colleges of the system owe to it, for it has shared with 

 them the appreciation, the benefits, and the inspiration which arise 

 from such a great national demonstration. 



There was perhaps no more striking feature of the celebration than 

 the recognition of the real significance attaching to the founding of 

 this first agricultiiral college. In the light of fifty years of experi- 

 ence, the influences which have sprung from this initial step upon the 

 educational conceptions of the whole country were weighed and meted 

 out. It was naturally a day of reckoning, and while the various 

 speakers did not withliold criticism of methods and standards and 

 conceptions prevailing at various stages of development, they were 

 generous in their praise of the final outcome. They paid high tribute 

 to the educational significance of the movement. 



President Wheeler, of the University of California, characterized 

 the inauguration of the agricultural college as " a weird undertaking 

 and audacious, unapproved of the elders," but he credited these col- 

 leges with having " embodied a fresh and vitally new idea of educa- 

 tion and what it is all about." The mechanism of education had be- 

 come largely a formal instrument of discipline. " The significance 

 of the agricultural college," he said, " for the whole trend of American 

 education was its naive effrontery in frankly seeking for life train- 

 ing a new connection with real life use: and this significance exceeds 

 in service to the naticm even the weight of the benefits wrought for the 

 tilling and the tiller of the soil " — a statement so broad in its charac- 

 ter that from a less reliable or a partisan source it might be regarded 

 as a possible exaggeration. 



Secretary Wilson described the establishment of the agricultural 

 college as one of the significant and far-reaching events of the nine- 

 teenth century. In these institutions the foundatiou of agricultural 

 education and research have been laid " to prepare the farmer for 

 his life work, provide agricultural literature, and lift the tiller of 



