194 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Rub. Doc. 



many are attracted thereby. That our graduates would not 

 all become farmers was indeed foreseen at the outset. Upon 

 this point I cannot do better than to quote the words of 

 President Chadbourne, who, writing at the time of his tirst 

 incumbency, in eighteen hundred and sixty-seven, said : — 



"The fear is expressed by some that, if an attempt is 

 made to give a truly liberal education, the students will 

 turn aside from agriculture to other pursuits. Undoubtedly 

 some of them will. If such an education is given in prac- 

 tical science as ouiiht to be given in such an institution, 

 there will be a demand for its students as teachers and in 

 other professions. And it would be an education entirely 

 unworthy of jSIassachusetts, and contrary to the plain intent 

 of the act of Congress donating the land, if it were so 

 meagre in its requirements that the students should be fitted 

 only for one pursuit in life. No surer way could be devised 

 to defeat the very end for which the college was established, 

 than to conduct it on a plan which proclaimed, in theory 

 and practice, that its students were to be kept in ignorance 

 of certain things, lest they should be above their calling. 

 No institution can ever succeed on such a plan, and it ought 

 not. It is difficult to see what a student would enter such 

 an institution for. Such views are repugnant to every gen- 

 erous feeling which an educated man ought to possess, 



* 



contrary to the princi})lcs of our institutions, and are not 

 sustained by the present position of the agriculturists of 

 this State. The adoption of such a system would be simply 

 saying to the farmers of Massachusetts that they are tillers 

 of the soil, because they are too ignorant for other pursuits. 

 An entirely difterent principle has l)cen acted upon in organ- 

 izing the college." 



It appears, from the figures which I have given, that we 

 have graduated I'ather less than one-half of the men who 

 have entered the college ; and it may be thought singuhir 

 that the proportion comi)leting the course is so small. The 

 experience of other colleges, however, has been very similar, 

 the proportion of men graduated, in the case of our oldest 

 and largest colleges, being even less than with us. The 

 reasons why so large a proportion of our students fail to 

 graduate are various. Many come to us with the idea of 



