332 AS UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT-III 



uplifting of the school system has enabled the university 

 steadily to raise and improve its own standard of in- 

 struction. 



But during the earlier period of our plans there was 

 one serious obstacle Charles James Folger. He was the 

 most powerful member of the Senate, its president, and 

 chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He had already won 

 wide respect as a county judge, had been longer in the Sen- 

 ate than any other member, and had already given ample 

 evidence of the qualities which later in life raised him to 

 some of the highest positions, State and National. His in- 

 stincts would have brought him to our side; for he was 

 broad-minded, enlightened, and earnestly in favor of all 

 good legislation. He was also my personal friend, and 

 when I privately presented my views to him he acquiesced 

 in them. But there were two difficulties. First, he had in 

 his own city a denominational college, his own alma 

 mater, which, though small, was influential. Still worse 

 for us, he had in his district the State Agricultural Col- 

 lege, which the founding of Cornell University must neces- 

 sarily wipe out of existence. He might rise above the first 

 of these difficulties, but the second seemed insurmountable. 

 No matter how much in sympathy with our main aim, he 

 could not sacrifice a possession so dear to his constituency 

 as the State College of Agriculture. He felt that he had 

 no right to do so ; he knew also that to do so would be to 

 sacrifice his political future, and we felt, as he did, that he 

 had no right to do this. 



But here came in to help us the culmination of a series 

 of events as unexpected as that which had placed the land- 

 grant fund at our disposal just at the time when Mr. Cor- 

 nell and myself met in the State Senate. For years a 

 considerable body of thoughtful men throughout the State, 

 more especially of the medical profession, had sought to 

 remedy a great evil in the treatment of the insane. As far 

 back as the middle of the century, Senator Bradford of 

 Cortland had taken the lead in an investigation of the 

 system then existing, and his report was a frightful ex- 



