AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 



agriculture, it soon became apparent that an 

 educated farmer was as essential to the best 

 development of the farm, as an educated law- 

 yer or jurist was needful for the proper 

 administration of the law. Here and there had 

 been more or less successful attempts to edu- 

 cate in agricultural lines, but it was not until 

 the coming of the real practical agricultural 

 colleges, mainly coincident with the founding 

 of the great state universities, that agricultural 

 education in America may be said to have 

 been estabhshed. The first agricultural college 

 in America, that of the state of Michigan, is 

 not yet quite fifty years old; while the history 

 of the larger number of them begins approxi- 

 mately with the beginning of the last genera- 

 tion of the recent century, the period of the 

 New Earth. In 1862, in the midst of the Civil 

 War, the Morrill bill, as it was called, was 

 enacted by Congress to provide means for 

 colleges for agricultural education. It granted 

 to each state thirty thousand acres of land for 

 each senator and representative to which the 

 states were respectively entitled for the main- 

 tenance of these land grant colleges, a splendid 

 service to the nation. But it was not until 



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