46 AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 



suit from sending the whole community to a school of lower 

 order than that which he attended. A single practical 

 school of the highest order in Paris (the Ecole Polytechnique) 

 during the last generation made France a nation celebrated 

 alike for profound philosophers, great statesmen, able ge- 

 nerals and military men, and civil engineers. If one high 

 school is established, subordinate schools affording the 

 elementary education of the latter, will follow in due time. 



2d. As a Practical Institution the Agricultural College 

 of Pennsylvania has adopted the fundamental principle, 

 that whatever is necessary for man to have done, it is 

 honorable for man to do, and that the grades of honor at- 

 taching to all labor, are dependent upon the talent, the care 

 and fidelity exhibited in performing it. It is further con- 

 sidered essential as a part of a students education that he be 

 taught the practical application, in the field and laboratory, 

 of the principles he studies in the class-room ; and manual 

 labor is also necessary for the preservation of health, and 

 the maintenance of habits of industry. An incidental, but 

 not unimportant result of the operation of these principles 

 is a reduction of the cost of tuition by the value of the 

 labor, so that the college can take students at the present 

 very low rates of admission. 



All students without regard to pecuniary circumstances, 

 are therefore obliged to perform manual labor as an essen- 

 tial part of the college education and discipline and train- 

 ing. In these respects consists a most essential difference 

 between the idea associated with manual labor at this 

 college, and that of all other attempts made heretofore to 

 combine manual labor with study. Instead of the idea 

 of poverty and want being associated with those who labor, 

 that of laziness, worthlessness, and vagabondry is asso- 

 ciated with those who refuse to work efficiently, and the 

 experience of the institution has already most assuredly 

 shown that no young man, of whom there is any hope for 

 future usefulness and efficiency in life at all, is insensible 

 to the disgrace which thus attaches to lazy vagabonds who 

 will work only as they are watched, and cheat their fellow 

 students by refusing to do their share of the labor assigned 



