15 



the industrial classes should study language and mathematics, for what purpose 

 should separate institutions of learning be maintained for them? 



This question is the more significant when we consider how very few of our 

 collegiate institutions are prepared to give proper instruction in the sciences. 

 With the exception of these few the oldest and richest of the eastern States 

 they have no museum at all, and the united apparatus of the entire colleges, 

 in many of the western States, would be insufficient for a single industrial school. 

 The sciences, as Mr. Owen shows, must be taught through the medium of the eye, 

 if a love for scientific instruction is to be spread abroad through all classes and 

 pursuits. To procure such museum and other things essential to an industrial 

 college, will require an expenditure that will demand, not only what can be de- 

 rived from a united fund, but additions to it by legislative grant. Mr. Owen 

 shows this. 



And if so. what can be accomplished but the destruction of the fund, by cre- 

 ating two or more institutions in each State, or parcelling it out to several ex- 

 isting colleges, that a like corps of professorships may be established in each 

 one of them ? And this, too, when the condition of our few agricultural colleges 

 shows that, so far, they have been unable to obtain a patronage from the indus- 

 trial classes sufficient to sustain any one of them. Truly, to divide is to fall. 

 As wisely may we contend for a division of these United States. 



Since this article was in type, I have received the catalogue of the Michigan 

 State Agricultural College for 1864. This is one of the best endowed and most 

 successful of our agricultural schools. It has a farm of 676 acres, of which 275 

 are under cultivation, and seven professors, with a superintendent of the farm. 

 It is located in a central position of our great northwestern agriculture, among 

 a population zealous in the cause of education, and in a State where common 

 schools are most successful. Here, if any where, a strictly agricultural college 

 could find support, yet the catalogue shows but sixty-two students in attend- 

 ance this year, three of whom have been expelled. Of the fifty-nine left, thirty- 

 three are in the preparatory class, leaving but twenty-six; for the senior, sopho- 

 more, freshman, and select course classes. There seems to be no junior class. 

 If the number of students is a proper criterion, then this Agricultural College is 

 a failure. It is an agricultural school exclusively. 



The State Agricultural College of Pennsylvania is not more prosperous. If 

 this is the result in such agricultural States, what will be the success of like 

 colleges in eastern States, whose agriculture is so much less, in proportion to the 

 population ? These facts but the more confirm me in the views above expressed, 

 that Avhilst our Industrial Colleges should have especially in view the thorough 

 education of the industrial classes not farmers alone, but the mechanic, the 

 manufacturer, and the merchant, too their course of instruction should be such 

 as to provide also for those purposing to follow professional avocations. 



PART II. 



Having considered in Part I, in a very general way, the nature of the in- 

 struction that should be given in the industrial colleges, from the objects it 

 should seek to accomplish, I am now to examine, in Part II, the several kinds 

 of industrial colleges and their courses of instruction. What I have to say in 

 regard to them is taken chiefly from Mr. Flint's report to the Massachusetts 

 State Board of Agriculture, and the report upon the plan for the organization 

 of colleges for agriculture and the mechanic arts, by the late Dr. E. Pugh, presi- 

 dent of the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, 



However different in extent are their courses of instruction, the several insti- 

 tutions referred to in these reports can be regarded in a fourfold classification : 

 1st. Where the agricultural institute or school is a part of a university. 2d. 



