THE COLLEGE 51 



believe that it is safe to say that after all the most powerful agents of 

 progress that the University sends out are its well-trained young men 

 and young women, when they are settled upon the farms of Illinois. 

 These were the ideals which inspired a few men in those early 

 days with an immovable determination to develop agriculture and 

 agricultural education in Illinois; and the energy with which they 

 prosecuted this public service in their generation was analogous almost 

 to the energy and faith of martyrs. All honor to the men who in the 

 last quarter century gave so freely of their time and service to this end : 

 Colonel Morrison, W. H. Fulkerson, Lafayette Funk, John R. Tan- 

 ner, Ames F. Moore, S. Noble King, Charles F. Mills, James H. 

 Coolidge, E. E. Chester, A. P. Grout, L. H. Kerrick, James Carter, 

 Frank H. Hall, Fred Hatch, E. B. Vorhees, H. A. Aldrich, H. M. 

 Dunlap, Jacob Zeigler, H. A. Winter, and many others. In the lead 

 of these men and associated with them have been many others who 

 carried on the work which they so ably began, whose names it would 

 be impossible to enumerate. 



THE GROWTH IN STUDENTS 



Following this renaissance in agriculture in the nineties, there 

 came to the College of Agriculture such earnest workers as Daven- 

 port, Blair, Hopkins, Mumford, Frasier, and Miss Bevier; and they 

 in turn brought to the faculty in each of their respective departments 

 an excellent corps of young instructors, many of them already well 

 known for eminent service in agriculture, and all learned and skilled 

 in the art and devoted to it. How rapidly the attendance in the Col- 

 lege of Agriculture increased is indicated by the following table: 



Year Students Registered Graduating Class 



90-91 7 2 



95-96 14 



00-01 159 4 



05-06 430 24 



10-11 729 51 



15-16 1,257 188 



20-21 1,184 176 



Students are now coming from almost every county in the state, 

 most of the states in the union, and from many foreign countries ; and 

 it is significant that over 50 per cent of the four-year graduates are re- 

 turning and residing upon farms, over 25 per cent are engaged in 

 some phase of agricultural activity, such as county advisory work, 

 teaching of agriculture in vocation schools, or agricultural investiga- 



