230 MICHIGAN STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 



which found a larger and wider expression a short time later in 

 the passage of the famous Morrill act, profited by this changed 

 attitude of the public on the one hand, and it stimulated and 

 quickened the acceptance of this general principle on the other. 

 Now development of agricultural education has, it seems to me, 

 in certain directions, outrun and is today in advance of the 

 development of education in other lines, and this movement 

 for agriculture and the mechanic arts has benefited all our higher 

 education in several distinct and definite ways. 



In the first place, this grant from the federal government, 

 seconded as it was by subsequent grants, strengthened enor- 

 mously the schools which had been started in the field of agri- 

 culture and provided for the establishment of an entirely new 

 set of schools in states where without this assistance a generation 

 or even two or three might have passed away before anything 

 had been done. 



Some of our American states were not, financially speaking, 

 able to establish these schools upon the requisite scale. The 

 federal grant distributed as I believe wisely, on the basis not of 

 population, but of the political unit, gave an impulse to the prin- 

 ciple of state education, which has borne fruit in every direction. 

 We see it perhaps in the most striking way in the institution 

 which I represent here today, and where, upon the basis of this 

 original land grant as a direct and immediate outcome of this 

 thrusting, if you please, of federal contribution upon the state 

 of Illinois, has been developed what will ultimately be one of the 

 greatest centers of scientific investigation and practical training 

 which the world has ever seen. I do not believe that the state 

 of Illinois would have entered upon this work for another gener- 

 ation and perhaps not for two if it had not been for his grant on 

 the part of the federal government. The University of the 

 state of Maine represents a similar development to that of Illi- 

 nois, only on a somewhat smaller scale and stretched through 

 a somewhat longer period. I am sure that in the University of 



