EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



Vol. 36. June, 1917. No. 8. 



In the passage of the Federal Aid Vocational Education Act an- 

 other important step has been taken by the Federal Government in 

 its relations to education. Under the new measure, federal appro- 

 priations ultimately aggregating over $7,000,000 per annum have 

 been made available for cooperation with the States in the promotion 

 of vocational education in agriculture, the trades and industries, and 

 home economics, including the preparation of teachers. The prin- 

 ciple of federal aid through the States to education in institutions 

 of subcollegiate grade has been established, and an additional set of 

 administrative machinery has been devised to operate the new system 

 of education which is provided. 



As a pioneer measure, the new legislation inevitably recalls the 

 original Morrill Act. Primarily both laws were apparently in- 

 tended to provide training in agi'iculture and the industries, the one 

 in collegiate, the other in subcollegiate, institutions. They were thus 

 both designed to develop a type of education of the utmost impor- 

 tance to our country, but previously never directly supported by^he 

 Federal Government and to only a limited degree by the States and 

 local communities. Likewise both acts involved the introduction of 

 a new system of education into the existing system. 



It is somewhat remarkable that these two measures, separated in 

 time by a period of over half a century, should both have been en- 

 acted in a period of great national crisis. The Morrill Act of 1862 

 was of course signed in the midst of the Civil War, while the Voca- 

 tional Education Act of 1917 antedated by only a few weeks the 

 formal entrance of the United States into the present conflict. The 

 coincidence is the more striking since both measures were designed 

 to foster agriculture and the industries, foremost among the arts 

 of peace, and since both had been pending in Congress for years 

 before the outbreak of hostilities. 



Early in 1907 a bill was introduced into the House of Representa- 

 tives by Hon. Charles R. Davis of Minnesota, providing annual fed- 

 eral appropriations for industrial education in agricultural high 

 schools and in city high schools. In a speech a few weeks later, ex- 

 plaining the bill, Mr. Davis said, " It is mainly for the purpose of 



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