246 



CORNELL, EZRA. 



COSTA RICA. 



plan would not succeed, and Mr. Cornell, to 

 afford the opportunity for a change of plans, 

 purposely disabled his machine, and subse- 

 quently put up the wires on poles as is now 

 done. Mr. Cornell now devoted his whole at- 

 tention and energy to the prosecution of the 

 telegraphic business, being more than once re- 

 duced to great straits from the want of means. 

 After the Government relinquished its connec- 

 tion with the telegraph as unprofitable, in 1845, 

 it took a new start as a private enterprise, and 

 began to prove profitable. When the line was 

 extended to New York in 1845, Mr. Cornell was 

 appointed to superintend it, and also to supervise 

 the construction of lines from New York to 

 Philadelphia. In 1846 he constructed a line to 

 Albany, and another in the following year from 

 Troy to Montreal. Being confident of the suc- 

 cess of these projects, he invested extensively in 

 telegraphic stocks, and realized large profits 

 from them. His good fortune did not end with 

 his business successes, for in 1863 he was 

 elected member of the Assemby from his dis- 

 trict, and in the year following of the State 

 Senate, and was reelected for the next term. 

 In 1862 he was chosen President of the State 

 Agricultural Society, and while in London that 

 year he sent several soldiers from England to 

 this country to join our army, paying all their 

 expenses. He had some years before made 

 his home at Ithaca, and finding that there was 

 a need of a public library there he erected a 

 fine building for it, and gave it an endowment 

 of $25,000, which he subsequently increased 

 to $50,000, and finally to $100,000, for the 

 purchase of books and the support of the li- 

 brarian. His wealth was now rapidly increas- 

 ing, and having tasted the luxury of giving, he 

 began to plan larger benefactions. In 1862, 

 Congress had passed the Agricultural Land 

 Grant Act, giving to the States, under certain 

 conditions and restrictions, 30,000 acres of 

 government lands for each Senator and Repre- 

 sentative of the State in Congress. Certain 

 parties in the State of New York had been 

 instrumental in procuring the passage of this 

 act, and when it was passed, and New York 

 was found to be entitled to 990,000 acres of 

 land, those parties, who had founded the Peo- 

 ple's College at Ovid, N. Y., and the Agricult- 

 ural College at Havana, N. Y., asked for this 

 landed endowment to be granted by the State 

 to their institutions. It was granted to them 

 under the conditions required by the act, but 

 both institutions found themselves utterly un- 

 able to fulfill these conditions, and consequently 

 the grant lapsed. Meantime, Mr. Cornell, then 

 a member of the State Senate, had been an 

 attentive observer of their efforts, and had 

 formed the purpose of founding a university 

 that would not fail. In 1865 he asked of the 

 Legislature a charter for a university which 

 he proposed, to found and endow with the 

 sum of $500,000. The charter was passed, 

 but with two. stipulations not greatly to the 

 credit of the lobby or the Legislature in that 



stage of the proceedings. One was that, as a 

 condition of receiving this charter, he should 

 pay over to Genesee College, Lima, N. Y., over 

 and above his endowment of Cornell Univer- 

 sity, $25,000. This was subsequently refunded 

 to Mr. Cornell by a Legislature which had the 

 grace to be ashamed of the acts of its prede- 

 cessor, and by him immediately donated to 

 Cornell University. The other stipulation was 

 that provision should be made for the free tu- 

 ition of one student from each Assembly dis- 

 trict in the State. Mr. Cornell complied with 

 both, and immediately put into the hands of 

 the designated trustees of the new university 

 securities to the amount of $500,000. The 

 next year, the People's College and the Agri- 

 cultural College having both collapsed, Mr. 

 Cornell made application for the land grant 

 for his university, which he had further en- 

 dowed with $260,000 more in land, money, and 

 a valuable mineralogical and geological col- 

 lection. He obtained the grant, and, taking 

 counsel of judicious friends, he laid the foun- 

 dations of his university course broad and deep, 

 and proceeded to erect the buildings for it. He 

 also contracted with the State for the pur- 

 chase of the entire Agricultural College land- 

 scrip, in order to locate it more advantageously 

 for the university. The buildings were so far 

 completed at Ithaca that, on the 7th of Octo- 

 ber, 1868, the university was formally opened, 

 nearly 500 students being in attendance. Many 

 other liberal gifts were made to the university 

 subsequently, and it is now one of the most 

 prosperous seats of learning in the country, 

 with a prospect, when its lands are all sold, 

 of being, perhaps, the richest of American col- 

 leges. It accomplishes the union of liberal and 

 practical education contemplated by its foun- 

 der as well as by Congress when public lands 

 were granted to the States. It has also realized 

 Mr. Cornell's idea of offering instruction to any 

 person in any study ; and, added to all these 

 advantages, it allows the fullest freedom of 

 religious belief among its Faculty as well as 

 among its students. The pressure to sell ag- 

 ricultural college land-scrip by so many States 

 at the same time had materially depreciated 

 its value, and made the location of these lands 

 proportionately more difficult. Mr. Cornell 

 had been very successful in locating the scrip, 

 purchasing largely timbered lands, but the sales 

 of these lands were delayed by the financial 

 condition of the country, and other causes, and 

 some persons were ready to attribute to Mr. 

 Cornell the design to enrich himself at the ex- 

 pense of the university. He demanded an in- 

 vestigation, which was made as thorough and 

 searching as possible, and resulted in his tri- 

 umphant vindication. He had been infirm for 

 several months, owing to an attack of pneu- 

 monia in the spring of 1874, but his final illness 

 was brief, and his death sudden. Few men 

 have been so widely and sincerely mourned. 



COSTA RICA (REPUBLIC A DE COSTA RIGA), 

 one of the five independent states of Central 



