THE COLLEGE 47 



In 1876 George E. Morrow, then professor of agriculture at 

 Iowa State College, was elected to the professorship in agriculture and 

 retained this office during eighteen consecutive years. He was a 

 singularly gifted man in many ways, and these included qualifications 

 needful in the arduous and difficult task which he undertook to per- 

 form. There were encouragements as well as discouragements. It 

 is not in place at this time to attempt a complete story. However, at 

 the close of his long career, he could not see that in the actual and 

 plainly observable condition of things his expectations had been just- 

 ified nor his favorable anticipations fulfilled. Too much was ex- 

 pected and the end sought too great. There was a woeful want of 

 understanding in regard to what one man could and could not do. 

 Superficiality prevailed. No one as yet realized the unavoidable cost 

 of agricultural education given in anything like a thoroly sensible way. 

 A lecture room with a desk, some chairs (not very many) , a few charts 

 and pictures hung upon the walls, and a half-dozen books upon agricul- 

 ture, these constituted the equipment of the professor of agriculture, 

 aside from a few things to be found in the way of a Jersey bull in the 

 barn and some weedy fence corners around the plots. It was no 

 wonder that students were few and enthusiasm at low ebb. 



Without further enumeration, it may be said that the agricultural 

 education of the first quarter of a century in our Land Grant Col- 

 leges was poor and halting, probably because it was before its time 

 The inertia of the ages was upon it. There was need of a self- 

 regenerating power. 



THE FIRST DEAN AND DIRECTOR 



It should not be inferred from its faults and deficiencies that lit- 

 tle had been done or gained. Yet it is true that there existed a want 

 of apprehension, inconceivable to us today, of things as vital then as 

 now, and in that sense there was somnolence and apathy instead of 

 vision and vigor. 



At this stage in development Eugene Davenport was called to 

 the University of Illinois as dean of the College of Agriculture and 

 director of the Agricultural Experiment Station. The new dean had 

 grown to young manhood on a Michigan farm, and had paid his own 

 way through the Michigan Agricultural College, graduating with the 

 class of 1878. He had farmed for ten years on his own account, 

 taught school in winter, and meanwhile as teacher, farmer, and citi- 

 zen had been vigorously active in rural affairs. 



