83 
A clause of the ad of 1890, however, limits the curriculum t«» specified sub- 
jects; but it is understood that In the Senate thai clause was very earnestly 
debated and the original restrictive clause was tin-own out. it, was. however, 
restored in the House, it is said, under pressure of the National Grange, and 
was finally accepted by the Senate In its present form. I bring this to your 
attention to indicate, what scans to me to be true, that this clause was 
prompted by an effort not to determine the grade Of instruction, hut to deter 
mine that these institutions to he further endowed and supported should he 
turned toward the industries of life rather than toward the liberal arts and 
professions of life in the ordinary sense of the term. 
What ought you and I to do to-day with all this freedom? 
In Connecticut we have two sets of boys who ought to come to our institu- 
tion — boys who have been in the common schools and who have had no high 
schools within reach, and boys who have been in the high schools, and who are 
going to some sort of college, who by taste and inheritance ought to come to 
our institution. We had only a four-year course. We had a little agriculture 
iu every year, and a considerable of the elements of liberal education in all the 
years. The result was that the boy coming from the high school had to go 
back, if he wanted to get our agricultural instruction, and start at the same 
point where the boy from the common school would start. You see what differ- 
ence there was in the matter of training and mental ability. It seems to me the 
mental ability a man has counts for vastly more than the subjects he studies. 
We do not care where a man gets his brain power. If he has got it and can 
apply it to agriculture and mechanic arts we are ready to receive it and put it 
to work. But we wanted to put in the proper place the man who had not 
developed his brain. So we hit on this scheme. I asked a committee of the 
faculty to work out a two years' course of preparation for farming. They 
worked out a two years' course in farming open to graduates of high schools. 
Our curriculum as it stands to-day divides our studies into three groups of two 
years each. We offer attractive courses to boys who have a limited amount of 
education, and to boys who find it in their power to get considerable education. 
In addition to this, in special subjects we give short courses varying from 
ten days to a year. We have found since we introduced these courses that we 
have come closer to our natural constituency ; we have the respect of the prac- 
tical farmer as we never had it before, and our short courses have fed our long 
courses. Besides our short-course work in the winter, we have been holding 
a summer school for teachers and others, in which v\ e have limited our subjects 
to nature and country life, and we have had three very successful sessions. 
It seems to me there is a good Held for the land-grant college, and that each 
State may and ought to organize its land-grant college so as to meet the needs 
of its peculiar constituents, and that anything and everything which it is found 
practical to teach within these limits should bo taught. 
I have not spoken of extension work. I do not believe extension work is a 
proper use of the land-grant college money. That is. we hold that anything you 
can teach at the college in connection with your college courses is appropriate 
and may be paid for out of your land-grant college money. We do not do any 
extension work at the expense of the Federal Treasury. Of course we under- 
stand that each State college is perfectly free to use the money it receives from 
its own legislature and its own State treasurer for any purpose the State may 
designate. 
W. A. Henry, of Wisconsin. President Stimson is entirely right when he says 
that the Grange was hack of those limitations in the Morrill Act of 1890. The 
argument was that many of the colleges had diverted much of the first appro- 
priation to purposes not closely connected with instruction in agriculture and 
