KANSAS STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 13 



College. That institution was rated as the best of its kind in th-i 

 country at that time. Prof. E. M. Shelton, then professor of 

 agriculture here, was one of itc alumni, and it is said that his 

 influence had much to do with the election of Professor Fairchild 

 to the presidency. Professor Pairchild had for fifteen years been 

 active as a member of the faculty of the Michigan college, and his 

 brother-in-law, Dr. R. C. Kedzie, professor of chemistry there, was 

 one of the most forceful of the men in early agricultural education. 



President Fairchild was about forty years of age when he 

 entered upon his duties here, and at this prime point of life he 

 brought to his task a well-matured judgment based on an adequate 

 experience in a kindred college. Still more, he brought ideals or 

 private and public life and service, a sense of order and of justice, 

 and a big heart full of sympathy for all right ambitions of youth. 

 The College was still small, scarcely more than two hundred 

 students being in attendance at any one time. President Fairchild 

 knew them all personally, and with his own hand wrote the assign- 

 ment of each to the work of each term. After examinations, each 

 delinquent received his personal touch, whether of needed stimulus, 

 unsparing presentation of unpleasant truth, or gentle sympathy. 



He inaugurated a system of weekly Faculty meetings, in 

 which all matters touching the students and the internal affairs 

 of the College were discussed and acted upon by the entire Faculty. 

 As numbers increased, this method became less well-adapted to 

 conditions, but the training that it gave to the Faculty developed 

 a spirit of loyalty and substantial unity that comes only from 

 complete discussion of the diverse and numerous questions that 

 constantly arise in college life. He encouraged the freest expres- 

 sion of views, and though his own were usually adopted in the 

 end, it was because of the compulsion of reason rather than that 

 of authority. This discussion of all College matters by the entire 

 Faculty was the means by which new members were assimilated 

 and unity of aim accomplished. A president could scarcely have a 

 more united and personally loyal faculty than that which President 

 Fairchild created. To have sat in that Faculty for any length oi 

 time was to have received an education in frankness, fairness, 

 courtesy, toleration, unselfishness, sympathy, and loftiness of all 

 ideals. 



The needs of the College for buildings during the administra- 

 tion of President Fairchild were met by the completion of the main 

 College building, since named Anderson Hall; the enlargement of 

 the chapel, which is part of it; the erection of a power plant and 

 a machine shop; the enlargement of the College barn; the erec 

 tion of a barn for the Horticultural Department; the erection of 

 a residence for the president; and the erection of a building for 

 the library and certain departments, and now known as Fairchild 

 Hall. The appropriation for a building for domestic science and 



