172 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



So far as their studies were the same, they sat in the same rooms, 

 heard the same lectures from the same professors, were admitted to 

 the same chapel, received their degrees at the same time and place, 

 went through the same ceremonies, and stood as equals on the roll of 

 graduates. 



Still the provision for industrial education was wretchedly meagre. 

 Other nations had meanwhile shot far ahead of our own in this respect. 

 Germany, France, and even England, had been aroused. They had 

 recognized the fact that the greatest warfare of the nineteenth century 

 is industrial warfare — the struggle between great nations for suprem- 

 acy in the various industries, and for the control of the various markets. 

 France had developed magnificently her system, putting nearly half a 

 million dollars into a collection of models for the School of Arts and 

 Trades alone. Germany had established a multitude of " Real Schu- 

 lenj'' and of Technical and Agricultural Colleges. England was already 

 making preparations for her great institution at South Kensington, on 

 which she has lavished millions. 



But, just as our great rebellion was drawing on, an attempt was 

 made in the Congress of the United States. Years before, that pure 

 and great man. Dr. Channing, had urged that the proceeds of the sales 

 of public lands be consecrated to the education of the people. An 

 attempt was now made ; but, though the good sense of Congress car- 

 ried a bill, it was vetoed by James Buchanan. But the friends of the 

 measure still pressed on. A chorus of optimists, pessimists, sham 

 economists, holdbacks, and do-nothings, opposed the measure ; but a 

 true statesman led the army of education. Justin S. Morrill, of Ver- 

 mont, stood then as now in the United States Senate. Let his name 

 be lonoj remembered. Statues shall be erected to him lono^ after the 

 little great men who tried to thwart him are forgotten. The bill was 

 passed, and it was signed by Abraham Lincoln. 



I ask you now to look a moment at the passage of that bill. Cen- 

 turies hence men shall look back upon it as one of the noblest things 

 in American annals. Why ? 



My friends, have you forgotten those days, their discouragements, 

 their forebodings, the morning beginning with " would God it were 

 evening," and the evening ending with " would God it were morning ? " 

 It was the darkest hour since Valley Forge ; lives, laws, family ties, 

 treasure — all seemed cast into the abyss — and the abyss ever growing 

 wider, and deeper, and blacker — and yet, while the American Con- 

 gress was providing for the most tremendous home policy, and carry- 

 ing on the most difficult foreign policy of modern times, they found 

 leisure to plan and carry out a great, comprehensive, and far-reaching 

 system of national education. 



Gentlemen, it was one of the great glories of Rome in its best 

 days that its statesmen did not despair of the Republic in its black- 

 est hours. N'ay, when a victorious Carthaginian army was encamped 



