HEARINGS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 453 
Wasuineton, D. C., Wednesday, February 24, 1904. 
The committee met at 11 o’clock a. m., Hon. James W. Wadsworth 
in the chair. 
The Cuarrman. Gentlemen, President Schurmann, of Cornell Uni- 
versity, is here to-day and desires to make a statement to the com- 
mittee somewhat in answer to the statement made by the Secretary of 
Agriculture when he appeared before us the other day in regard to 
the work done by Cornell University for the promotion of agriculture. 
STATEMENT OF J. G. SCHURMANN, PRESIDENT OF CORNELL 
= UNIVERSITY. 
Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I am very much 
obliged to you for the opportunity of appearing before you, and I 
appear, as you, sir, have said, to correct certain errors which have 
crept, no doubt inadvertently, into the statement made before this 
committee by the Secretary of Agriculture on the 16th of January 
last, in your afternoon session. ‘The Seg <i tae will be found on 
page 425 of your printed hearings, and as there are only five or six 
sentences which concern me I will take them up seriatim. The first 
two sentences are as follows: 
Along the line of soil physics we are helping to establish that study in two institu- 
tions to begin with; one is in the State of New York, at the Cornell institution, and 
the other is in Kentucky, at Lexington. I have never had any mercy on institutions 
that take money from the Federal Government and do not use it for the purpose for 
which Congress appropriated it, and I have laid the lash unsparingly on any Cornell 
man I have ever met, no matter where or when. 
That statement seems to imply that there is a diversion on the part 
of Cornell University of Federal funds to objects other than those 
specified in the acts of Congress under which the funds are received. 
ow, Mr. Chairman, Cornell University has received from the United 
States, first of all, the Morrill land grant, the scrip granted under the 
act of 1862. She has received from that source $688,000. That scrip, 
you will remember, sir, in all States which had no Federal lands within 
their own borders, had, under the terms of the act donating it, 
to be sold immediately. These forced sales all over the country pro- 
duced a glut in the market, and the price soon fell from the Government 
price of $1.25 per acre to $1, and then to 80 cents and to 70 cents, and 
finally to 50 cents and lower. The State of New York realized on the 
sale of its scrip $688,000. That is about the average that was received 
for the scrip by States not having public lands within their own 
borders. eae rien : 
Those States having public lands within their own borders were not 
required, as 1 have said, under the act of Congress of 1862, to sell their 
scrip immediately. In New York the sum I have mentioned, $688,000, 
was turned into the State treasury and a certificate of indebtedness 
issued to Cornell University, on which Cornell University receives 
annually 5 per cent interest, amounting to $34,000. Now, sir, the 
Federal act of 1862 provided that the moneys received from the sale 
of these lands should be used for the establishment of at least one col- 
lege where the leading object, without excluding other studies, clas- 
c s—04——30 
