REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER. 4 
has progressed during the past year. The Ohio College has been located 
in the vicinity of Columbus, with a fund of nearly half a million of dol- 
lars from proceeds of lands and a donation of $500,000 from Franklin 
County. The Missouri Institution has also been organized, in Boone 
County, with local donations exceeding two hundred thousand dollars, and 
330,000 acres of land located under the congressional grant. Colleges 
had previously been organized, or departments of agriculture added to 
existing institutions, in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachu- 
setts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, 
Towa, Kansas, and California. Nebraska is now perfecting an organ- 
ization, and other’States may have taken steps in that direction, of which 
no official or other information has been received. 
The land scrip has been issued to most of the Southern States, and a 
portion of it has been sold, but I have heard of no action toward organ- 
ization of colleges, and fear that the scrip has, in some instances, been 
frittered away by sales at nominal prices, as has been the case in many 
of the Northern and Eastern States. It is to be regretted that restric- 
tions against sales at lower than Government rates had not been im- 
posed upon the trustees of these institutions. Perhaps it would have 
been better still to have required the actual location of these lands, 
which would inevitably have resulted, under judicious management, in 
an ultimately larger income from rentals or subsequent sales, The more 
western States all pursued this course, with a fair prospect of realizing 
five dollars per acre instead of fifty to seventy-five cents. 
I am confident that these institutions are destined to become a vital 
power in the land, and to wield an influence which colleges weighted 
with a “curriculum” of studies of classical ages can never exert; but it 
will be many years before their best fruits will begin to appear, and 
many mistakes will be made, (some of them, possibly, almost fatal in 
their character,) misconceptions of the sphere of their highest utility 
will occur, and inefficiency will undoubtedly mar the beauty of their 
practical results ; but ultimately, when the grand idea of practical edu- 
cation in America shall be fully crystallized, and their faculties shall be 
composed of young and vigorous men developed within these institu- 
tions and under the influence of higher progression in physical and prac- 
tical science, their true utility and beneficent influences will begin to 
appear. 
I would respectfully suggest the importance of an authorization, by 
Congress, of a commission, under the direction of this Department, to 
examine minutely the plan of organization, the construction of build- 
ings, management of grounds, aud general workings of the industrial 
colleges organized under the congressional land grant, with instruc- 
tions to report to the next Congress, for the information of the country 
and the benefit of institutions of similar character yet to be organized. 
