35 
and river into the illimitable lands of the Dear and middle and Ear West from the 
Allegheniea to the Mississippi and Missouri; from the Mississippi and Missouri to the 
greal American desert, the Rocky Mountains, and the shores of the Pacific Ocean. 
And thus the wave of settlement, adjusting itself to peaceful industry, laid the foun- 
dations of new states, planted new industries, brought vast stretches of hitherto 
unproductive lands under cultivation, opened up tin- treasures of the mine, multi- 
plied the lines of communication, and poured the agricultural and mineral wealth of 
the great VVesl into the commerce of the world. 
Concurrently with these recent economic changes, resulting from the operation of 
natural causes, economic changes of equal magnitude were brought about through 
fiscal Legislation at home and abroad. The establishment of t'n-e trade in Great 
Britain opened the markets of that country to American agricultural products, stimu- 
lating to an unwonted degree production at home and correspondingly depressing 
agriculture in the British isles. American wheat and corn monopolized the supply 
of breadstuffs to the British artisan, building up and controlling a market into which 
no other competitors could enter on equal terms. Concurrently therewith the pro- 
tectionist policy adopted by the United States not only rendered this country inde- 
pendent of foreign supplies, but enabled her in the end to become in many of the 
chief products oi the mine, the forge, and the loom a formidable competitor for the 
chief part of the commerce of the world. 
Under these conditions, vaguely apprehended by the majority, but apprehended 
with more or less clearness of vision by a tew of the far-sighted statesmen- of the 
country, the Morrill law of 1862 was passed by the Congress of the United States. 
There arose a demand for a system of education adapted to tin- needs of the time, 
which should go beyond the requirements for classics, law, medicine, divinity, and 
letters; an education which, without proscribing or neglecting classical and philo- 
sophical studies, should utilize for the public good the known and discoverable laws 
and processes, of nature for the increase of production and the multiplication <»f the 
comforts and necessities of life. This demand the Morrill law was intended to satisfy, 
and upon this foundation more than fifty State colleges and universities are 
established. 
Mr. Morrill saw that in the rapid alienation of the public lands through settlement 
and gratuitous allotment to railway corporations the public domain was rapidly 
being exhausted. He accordingly determined to dedicate a part of this rapidly 
diminishing public domain to the education of the American people along new lines 
ami according to the necessities imposed by geographical and economic conditions 
peculiar to the Western Hemisphere. He provided that land script should be given 
to the several States in proportion to population for the endowment of institution- of 
learning, wherein should be taught those branches of learning related to agriculture 
and the mechanic arts, without excluding classical and other scientific studies, and 
including military tactics, for the education of the industrial classes in the several 
pursuits and professions of life. This was a radical departure from the old idea of 
education. It was a conception of university work such as had never yet been thought 
out by any thinker and whose realization had never yet been attempted. The 
existing body of human knowledge, whether of mind or of matter, hypothetic-ally 
assumed or actually realized, was to be made available for appropriation by the 
learner; and the far greater domain of nature, unknown or partially known, invited 
the investigator through observation and experiment to new fields of discovery. 
The old institutions looked doubtfully and not quite sympathetically on the new 
education. They gravely shook their heads at the credulity of those who thought 
that investigation in those branches of science relating to agriculture and the 
mechanic arts could be carried beyond the merest rudiments or would be productive 
of results at all commensurate with the expenditure of the time and money proposed. 
But when within a few years they saw an interpretation given to the legislation of 
Mr. Morrill which did not confine mechanic arts to blacksmitbing, carpentry, and 
kindred handicrafts; which went beyond the still more advanced conception of manual 
training and discovered its ultimate application in engineering — mechanical, electrical, 
civil, sanitary, and mining; when they saw, as preliminary and preparatory to these, 
extended courses in mathematics, chemistry, and physics, reaching far above and 
beyond those in the older colleges and universities, they began to show more con- 
sideration f^r the new and to ask. "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" 
When, moreover, they saw that the foundations of a science of agriculture were 
being laid in extended courses of botany, comparative anatomy, and physiology, 
biology, chemistry, entomology — that, through these, barren fields were made fer- 
tile, the products of animal ami vegetable industry improved in quality, multiplied in 
quantity, and increased manifold in commercial vahn — the exclusiveness of the old 
tacitly acquiesced in a modified recognition of the new. 
