68 3 
VETERINARY EDUCATION, ETC,, IN NEW YORK STATE. 
empty, not because of your deficiency perhaps, but of the severe 
requirements for which our young men had no opportunity and 
no time to prepare and which have chased them m the veterinary 
halls of other states. 
Do you believe, gentlemen, that I exaggerate. I have seen 
enough of this done in the past, and if it proves to be so when 
the requirements were so slowly, so gradually increased, what 
will it be when the new regime is re-enforced ? 
You may say that if the students from the state will go to 
graduate in othei states, they will have at their return to submit 
to the requirements of the regents bill before they can practice. 
This is true, but how do you know that they will return ? 
and what will be said of New York, the “Excelsior” State, 
whose veterinarians would then become alumni from other 
schools, from graduates out of the State. 
The Alumni Association of the American Veterinary Col- 
lege counts two hundred gentlemen out of her five hundred 
and thirty graduates, two hundred who are from New York 
State and New York City, and among which many are prac¬ 
ticing in the state. 
How many more hundred are likely to follow their example 
and yet, the life of our private schools, of those who were the 
nursery of the American veterinary profession , with their exist¬ 
ence of hard and persistent devotion to her, a proud life as it is 
in fact, is threatened and her existence may be suddenly ended 
by a stroke of the pen of our Governor. 
Gentlemen, no one in this building knows what the founda¬ 
tion and elevation of a place of instruction and specially of a 
veterinary school exacts of work, of restless nights, of patience, 
of sacrifices of all kinds. Some imagine that it is all smooth 
road, that all is needed is to organize, issue circular, open, go 
on ... or close. But if any one entertains those ideas, let him 
be sure that it will take but a very short time to satisfy him of 
his error. 
Our schools, as they have been since 1864, are private un¬ 
dertakings, their life, their improving curriculum, their success, 
