CONGRESSIONAL ENDOWMENT. 369 



We will now trace the progress of Agricultural Education in 

 our own country. 



Hon. G. M. Pinney, who has given an admirable summary 

 of the movement, its importance, its aim and scope, in his no 

 ble pamphlet on the New Education, says : 



The political considerations which dictate a course of thorough 

 education for our agriculturists, are quite as important as any 

 which are connected with the subject as a pursuit. Our farmers 

 should understand our government as well as our soil. They should 

 be as capable of comprehending human as natural laws, and should 

 know how the evils of state are to be remedied, as well as the evils 

 of their crops. It is this sort of an education that our government 

 is seeking to introduce through the various colleges which have 

 been established by its munificence. 



These classes, which perform so important an office in all the in 

 dustrial enterprises of our State and country, cannot discharge a 

 higher or holier duty for humanity in this age, than to see that the 

 object of Congress in the &quot;New Education&quot; is accomplished. They 

 alone, can do it. The reform is in their hands. If it fails to realize 

 all that is promised for it all the most sanguine expectations of its 

 founders, the blame will be theirs. It is emphatically a trust con 

 fided to their intelligence and energy. 



One of the first, if not the verjrfirst definite movement to 

 ward the endowment of agricultural colleges, was a presentation 

 of a memorial from the Pacific Coast to the Congress of 1853, 

 by Warren & Son, in the Senate, and there approved and unan 

 imously referred to the Committee on Education. It ably set 

 forth the agricultural capacity of California, its growing im 

 portance as an agricultural State, and the unexampled facilities 

 afforded for every department of agricultural education. It at 

 tracted respectful attention from eminent friends of agriculture 

 in the Eastern States. Our greatest men had already urged the 

 consecration of our public lands to the ^education of the people. 

 Europe had moved in the establishment of agricultural and 

 mechanical schools; Congress had given those liberal endow 

 ments to &quot;higher seminaries of learning&quot; in the younger States, 

 on which the noble universities of Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa 

 and others, are founded. But nothing was done to elevate our 

 industries through education until July, 1862, when Congress, 

 under the sound of hostile cannon, legislated into being, the 

 great comprehensive system of industrial and scientific educa 

 tion, a system which was to give dignity to labor, and &quot;knit 

 into its very core&quot; practical with theoretical knowledge of all 

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