larger than two American counties, has four higher colleges and
twenty agricultural schools besides a veterinary college, and a de-
partment of agriculture of twenty professors at the University of
Leipsic. Saxe Weimar, with a population of no more than 230,000
souls has three agricultural colleges besides an agricultural depart-
ment with fifteen professorships at the University of Jena.
And what has been the result? Simply this, that while in every
one of the American states, as is shown by the agricultural reports,
the average crop per acre has been steadily growing less and less,*
^Authority for this statement may be found in the Report of the Commission of Agri-
culture for the year 1886, p. 19. It is there shown that the average yield of the leading
cereals, between 1870 and 1879 was considerably greater than that from 1879 to 1885. The
diminution is shown by the following ligures : The average corn crop declined from 26.8
to 25.1 bushels per acre; Wheat, from 12.5 to 12.1 ; Oats, from 27.5 to 27.2; Rye, from 14.2 to
12.8; Barley, from 22.4 to 22.08; and Buckwheat, from 17.5 to 13.6.
13
the average crop in Germany has been as steadily growing more and
more. In view of these facts, we ought to bow our heads in humili-
ty if not in shame. At least let us cease our unwarranted boasting
about the superiority of our educational facilities.
Such have been the tendencies in other parts of the world, and I
trust that you will now agree with me in thinking that the Morrill
Grant in purpose and in aim was in harmony with the general spirit
and the best tendencies of the times.
The third part of my thesis is the proposition that this land grant
was fraught with the means of incalculable advantage to the nation.
I am willing to concede that in many cases the avails of the grant
were not so large as they should have been. If it were necessary, I
would admit that in some instances there was a conflict between
private and public interests and that in consequence there was a cul-
pable misuse of the funds ; I say "if it were necessaiT," for I am
not aware that any such instances are clearly established.
But if there were even general misuse of the funds, would the fact
prove that the grant was unwise? Because there is misuse and
extravagance in the building of Post Offices and Custom Houses, do
we say that the building of such structures should cease ? Do we
argue that because there are fraudulent contracts for carrying the
mails, therefore contracts for the further carrying of the mails should
cease ? Do we say that because there are frauds in elections there-
fore no elections shall be held? No! a thousand times no! We
contemplate the good we receive, we determine to prevent the recur-
rence of abuses in the future, and then we demand those appropria-
tions which the greatest good of the people requires. And so must
it be in judging of this great measure.
And now having said so much, I wish to allude to one fact that
prevented the large returns from the grant that were anticipated. A
majority of the states had no government lands within their borders
subject to location under the bill. The consequence was that most
of the states were obliged to sell the government scrip at whatever
price it would bring. The market was flooded with scrip, and the
states found themselves confronted with this dilemma. Either they
must sell the scrip at the contemptible price of thirty or fifty cents
per acre, or they must postpone the establishment and development
of the college. It is not easy perhaps to decide which in this alter-
native was the wiser course to pursue ; certain it is that when the
states sold the scrip at a low price they practically gave back to the
14
people in the way of profit on the lands a large share of what Con-
gress had in the first instance intended for the colleges. It follows
that whatever the states lost in selling upon a low market, the peo-
ple gained in buying, and are in equity through Congress under obli-
gations to restore. Fortunate were those states which, although
obliged to sell the scrip, found buyers who were willing to locate the
lands and give proper guaranty to turn over the profits to the college
established.
But notwithstanding the difficulties in the way of realizing the full
value of the Grant, no one, I imagine will have the hardihood to deny
that a great, an immense good has been accomplished. Look at a
few of the facts and figures. The Land Grant amounted to 17,430,-
000 acres. The sum realized from the sale of this scrip is reported
to have been $7,545,405. . This sum has been greatly increased by
additions of grounds, buildings, apparatus, and money given by
benevolent individuals. In this way the land scrip fund, which in
New York amounted to scarcely more than $600,000, has been aug-
mented to not less than about $6,000,000. Though the university to
which I refer has, perhaps, been the most fortunate of the land grant
institutions, gifts with a similar purpose have likewise increased the
endowments in other States. The result is that the latest reports
show that these colleges now employ nearly five hundred professors
and teachers, and give instruction to some five thousand students.
Many of these students have, in turn, become teachers in other schools
and colleges. From the institution with which I have the honor to
be connected, I recall the names of at least twelve of the graduates
who have become professors of some branch of Agriculture in other
schools of collegiate grade. In a similar way, the other land grant
colleges are disseminating knowledge on those great subjects which
were especially named in the bill.
But this, of course, has been but a small part of the work. Thous-
ands of young men, educated in the various branches of Agriculture
and Mechanical Science, have gone forth to /engage in the practical
duties of life, and thus have disseminated and multiplied the knowl-
edge they have received. The work is to go on with ever accelerat-
ing vigor, and thus there will be sent out a continued succession for
all future time.
There is another feature of the benefits received from this great
measure that ought not to be overlooked. I refer to the fact that
centres of agricultural knowledge have been established in all the
15
States of the Union. The science of agriculture, before almost ab-
solutely unknown by the masses of the people has come to be in
some measure at last respected and ven honored. The agricultural
necessities of the country have been made more apparent. To some
thousands of young men the stupendous fact is now taught that na-
ture will not be cheated of her rights, and that for everything you
take out of the soil, you must put something back, or the time will
come when nature's cashier will cease to honor your drafts, and you
will end in bankruptcy.
And what a field for such teaching there is ; look at the statistics
of our Agricultural Department. In every one of the States, in the
North, in the South, in the East and even in the West, the yield per
acre of all the great cereal crops has been steadily declining since
the early years of the Century. The American farmer has impover-
ished the soil, and then gone West. It is not certain that this pro-
cess has even yet been arrested. The last statistics available for
general comparison are not very reassuring. If the New England
States have held their own, it has not been by means of improved ag-
riculture, but by the general establishment of manufactories. The
same process has been going on that converted many of the fertile
lands of Virginia into pine barrens. As we all know too well thou-
sands of acres in the Eastern States have been abandoned as practic-
ally worthless. Meanwhile the streams of immigration and emigra-
tion have been going on. The Irish and the Germans have come to
Massachusetts ; but the farmers of Massachusetts have gone to New
York and Ohio, the people of New York and Ohio have gone to In-
diana and Illinois, and the people of Indiana and Illinois have gone
to Kansas and the farther West. Ever westward has been the move-
ment until the current has been arrested on the slopes of the Pacific.
At length there is no West, to whose virgin soil we may flee. Our
farmers no longer have the choice between remaining poor or moving
toward the setting sun ; they have the other alternative, the one
which has long confronted the farmers of 4 the old world, remaining
poor or a more perfect ^knowledge of the conditions under which na-
ture will yield a bounteous and profitable return.
Then look at another fact. In many regions of our country the
same desolating process is going on that has reduced the fertile fields
about the Mediterranean to sterile deserts. The trees are being
swept away and thus we attempt to frustrate the methods by which
an all wise Providence designed that the moisture in the deep soil
16
should be taken up into the plant and cast off into the clouds to be
returned again as rain. What has been the result? The rainfall has
been diminished, the showers which heaven still does not refuse to
furnish, instead of being welcomed by the soft verdure of forests
and cultivated fields and lovingly kept in the soil for the good of all
animal and plant life, is repelled by parched hill sides, so that it
shoots off in angry torrents and is soon once more in the lakes and the
great rivers and the oceans beyond. Thus by a perfectly explicable
method our climate is undergoing a change and it is the change which
in some of the regions of the old world has caused the sands to drift
over regions that were once the homes of a prosperous people.
And yet however great the difficulties may seem, there is no ten-
dencv of nature that is more amenable to the influence of man's ap-
preciative intelligence. Everybody remembers Emerson's allusion to
the ability of the English by the planting of trees on the borders of
Egypt to bring rain again after a drought of three thousand years.
We have been doing the same thing in the West ; for the planting of
trees and cornfields in Kansas and Nebraska up to the very frontier
has already pushed the rain-line further west by more than a hundred
miles. The Reports of the Commissioner of Agriculture are teem-
ing with facts of similar significance. It is estimated, for example,
that the loss from the swine plague alone reaches annually some thir-
ty millions of dollars, and that the value of corn and wheat annually
destroyed by fungi is not less than the enormous sum of two hundred
millions.*
These are some of the lessons and some of the necessities that are
taught by experience ; and yet they are only hints, as it were, de-
signed to show how vast is the domain that invites the careful study
of our schools and colleges. It is into this domain that the people
were invited by the wise Land Grant of 1862. It is in this domain
that the colleges and universities founded on that grant, if they live
up to their high behest, will accomplish results that shall be for the
helping, if not for the healing of the nation.
* Report of Commissioner of Agriculture for 1886, pp. 11, 24.
ADDRESS.
HON. JUSTIN S. MORIULL,
United States Senator for Vermont.
While having some words to which I may not unwillingly give ut-
terance, yet, not until within the past two weeks have I had any ex-
pectation of being able, in response to the invitation of January
last, to be present on this 25th Anniversary of the passage of the
act by which this and other similar colleges have been established in
the 'several states. I am glad to recognize your observance of the
day as evidence that these institutions have won some consideration
and hold here your cordial respect. I do not feel that the Land-
Grant Colleges derive any dignity from the author of the act of Con-
gress to which they owe their birth, however dear to me his reputa-
tion may very naturally be supposed to be. The existence of the
Colleges can alone be vindicated by the reason that they are not su-
perfluous but indisputably wanted ; and that their work is not Utopi-
an but practically of real service to our country. They must derive
all of their dignity, not from any real or supposed obstacles encount-
ered in their origin, but from the substantial equivalent they give for
the four years of vigorous life surrendered by students to their guid-
ance, and from the lustre reflected upon them by their alumni.
The importance of the early training of the horse and the ox has
never been lost sight of by mankind ; a seven-years' apprenticeship
has been thought not too much to acquire the skill of a master me-
chanic ; and the importance of long terms of human training, for the
professions of theology, law, medicine, and pedagogy, has for years
been held to be indispensable. But these learned professions, impor-
tant as they are, numerically include only a small fraction, compara-
3
18
lively, of the human race ; and, yet, it is hardly too much to say,
that our ancient colleges and universities mainly provided instruction
originally intended exclusively for those who sought to be equipped
for these special classes. The great majority of mankind, therefore,
lacking perhaps neither ambition nor native ability, were dependent
upon the hap-hazard of self-culture, or upon being taught in some
brief way in the district-school how to read, write, and cipher. If
this uncounted and unrepresented multitude sought to acquire knowl-
edge of more practical value in the voyage of life, they soon found
that useful knowledge was often estimated in ancient and richly en-
dowed institutions to mark the humble station of steerage passen-
gers, while the august institutions assumed to provide alone for pas-
sengers in the cabin, and, for them having reluctantly abandoned
the discipline of the "birch" only intellectual discipline, the effica-
cy of which no one disputes, though no less efficacy may be claimed
in behalf of studies for scientific use than for classic ostentation.
An eminent orator of Harvard College, it is reported, once asked,
" What is a University ?" and answered it by quoting himself as hav-
ing said thirty years before that, "A University is a place where
nothing useful is taught, and a University is possible only where a
man may get his livelihood by digging Sanscrit roots."
This may have been sanctioned by the authority of longevity, and
certainly appeared thirty years ago as too antiquated and limited for
the general wants of American citizens, who claim that in any sphere
of life education pays, that all persons, however humble their pur-
suits, become more valuable by education, more useful to themselves
and to the community, and especially so where each one has a visible
and responsible share in the government under which he lives.
Something more than a system of liberal education for the class of
the so-called "liberal professions" was demanded, and this class,
where the greatest number of representatives of the highest culture
now exists, should all gladly welcome additions to their own numbers
of other learned men. The great army of industrious laborers in the
field and workshop, in mines and factories, or on railroads and other
business enterprises ready at any time to give their lives in support
of the liberties and union of the nation had some right to more of
sound and appropriate learning that would elevate and especially
profit them in their respective future careers.
The school-age of man is far too brief for the acquirement of all
knowledge of philosophy, letters and science, and where the dead
19
languages have the primacy, there is little chance for the sciences,
for modern languages, or even for our native tongue, or, indeed, for
much, with scholarly thoroughness, in anything else. A mere smat-
tering of the sciences, or of theancientlanguages, is no more to be cov-
eted than even the old absolute unity of all college education. The
organic law of the Land-Grant Colleges, therefore, made it a leading
feature that instruction should be provided, without ostracising any-
thing, in branches related to Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, up-
on which, as we all know, the greater number of mankind must rely
for their subsistence and happiness, as well as for their growth and
reputation among men.
The sciences related to agriculture, tending, among other things,
to increase the food products of the world, and the mechanic arts,
upon which nations must lean for their independence and defence,
should neither be ignored nor assigned to an inferior position. The
mastery in these robust branches of learning requires training and
brain-power, and does not exclude, though it may diminish attention
to those branches of study too often regarded as the only branches
where honors can be won, or as the only luxuries of a liberal educa-
tion. Our late Mr. Motley once said, "Give me the luxuries of life
and I will do without the necessaries ; " but the wit of the epigram
does not conceal its mischievous philosophy, nor excuse its accept-
ance by educational institutions. The world cannot do without the
necessaries of education any more than without the necessaries of
life. We can do without champagne and Limburger cheese and we
might have done without Dr. Parr and Matthew Arnold, but Ameri-
cans would have been very unhappy without Dr. Franklin, although,
like Shakespeare, he only "knew a little Latin and less Greek." Dr.
Parr was a prolific writer, distinguished for the Ciceronian purity of
his Latin, and thought his knowledge of Greek second only to that
of Porson, but a later generation has denounced "The thread of
Parr's verbosity as finer than the staple of his argument," while the
same generation promises immortality to the fame of Dr. Franklin.
Surely the researches by which scientific knowledge has made its tri-
umphant advances during the present age. or by which many con-
spicuous inventions have been brought forever into the fruitful and
beneficent service of mankind, entitle their authors to as high a
measure of respect as has been or can be awarded to any of their
contemporaries in other spheres of life, and seems to bring them
more nearlv related to the Divine Creator of the Universe.
20
The Land-Grant Colleges were founded on the idea that a higher
and broader education should be placed in every state within the
reach of those whose destiny assigns them to, or who may have the
courage to choose industrial vocations where the wealth of nations is
produced ; where advanced civilization unfolds its comforts, and
where a much larger number of the people need wider educational
advantages, and impatiently await their possession. The design was
to open the door to a liberal education for this large class at a cheaper
cost from being close at hand, and to tempt them by offering not only
sound literary instruction, but something more applicable to the pro-
ductive employments of life. It would be a mistake to suppose it
was intended that every student should become either a farmer or
mechanic when the design comprehended not only instruction for
those who may hold the plow or follow a trade, but such instruction
as any person might need with " the world all before them where
to choose " and without the exclusion of those who might prefer to
adhere to the classics. Milton in his famous discourse on education,
gives a definition of what an education ought to be, which would seem
to very completely cover all that was proposed by the Land-Grant
Colleges ; and Milton lacked nothing of ancient learning, nor did he
suffer his culture to hide his stalwart republicanism. He says : "I
call, therefore, a complete and generous education, that which fits a
man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices,
both private and public, of peace and war."
It was not desired that literary colleges should be superseded, or
be in any sense dwarfed, as surely none of these elder colleges or
universities could have any reason to complain at the prospect of
an augmentation of the number of educated young men, nor could
they have any reason to complain but should rejoice when reinforced
by an additional corps of teachers though differently equipped
enlisted in the earnest labor of training men for the noblest ranks of
usefulness. There is room for all. Thorough culture is contagious.
One educated young man creates an educational epidemic in a whole
neighborhood. The only contention is that, in educational institu-
tions of the highest dignity, scholarship in useful learning should
stand as equal to scholarship in any other branch of education, and
I hope to be pardoned for believing that it will do as much to disci-
pline and to fashion as large a proportion in the hundred of men for
distinction in society, and to make them valuable citizens, as well as
authorities and ornaments in their respective vocations, entitling them
21
as much to the honors of a college, as anything to be found in the
humanities of a four years' university curriculum.
Within the memory of many of those who now live, the advance-
ment of the useful arts and sciences is supposed to have eclipsed all
previous records. Modern text-books of chemistry, botany, entomol-
ogy, forestry, geology, metallurgy, electricity, mechanics, architecture
and zoology, would be unknown, if not " all Greek," to most college
graduates of fifty years ago ; but since the date of the Land-Grant
Colleges, other colleges, endowed with sufficient means, have also
responded with more or less liberality to the demand for instruction
in these branches, leaving many of them elective or optional. The
Land-Grant Colleges have, therefore, not only done good work of
their own, but have prompted, perhaps, some good work upon the
part of others.
It should not be forgotten that the living languages of commercial
nations are beginning to be held by a vast majority of our busy world
at least of equal value to those which, if the slang may be pardoned,
are "as dead .as Julius Caesar." The hundreds of thousands of
immigrants who come to us annually often learn how to vote before
they have learned the American language, and they must be addressed,
if addressed at all, in their mother tongue. It would not become me
to depreciate the value of the language of Plato, nor that of Cicero ;
let us bid those in their pursuit God-speed ; to what has hitherto been
called " the learned professions," wherein the Press should be includ-
ed, they are undeniably useful, and even the exaggeration of this
usefulness may well be excused ; but the increased value of time, in
the present age of the locomotive, telegraph and telephone, makes
them to much more than half of the world a costly acquisition, espec-
ially so if we consider how quickly the acquisition often vanishes
unless permanently held fast through daily reading by such tireless
students as Choate or Gladstone.
Eloquence and scholarship are nowhere more highly appreciated
than in America, and nowhere are creditable achievements in arts
and sciences more swiftly rewarded. Our country will welcome
" bright, particular " stars in whatever constellation they may appear,
and give a home to them all.
The establishment in many of our cities of what are known as
" Business Colleges " discloses how inadequate have been the means
of instruction for those engaged in trade and commerce ; and business
men everywhere have seemed ready to accept of any remedy offered.
22
Ruskin says that, ID England and Europe, " a man is called edu-
cated if he can write Latin verses and construe a Greek chorus."
We may here be permitted to ask for something which to many may
appear of more practical application and utility, and those who do
not agree with us should remember that liberal education is ever
tolerant of opposing views, and that there is no power in education
of any kind to make an imbecile clever, to give wit to the dull, or
genius to the brainless ; and it is by no means certain that any kind
will make a lazy fellow work ; but, a sound education ought to give
its recipients the control of all the forces with which they have been
blessed by their Creator, and even then eminence is not often won
without lifelong earnest work.
Lovingly and religiously devoted to the highest ideals of beauty,
the Greeks selected the most perfect of human forms as models upon
which to base the creation of their divinities in marble representing
Zeus and Minerva, Apollo and Athena ; and, through all the rivalry
of succeeding ages, no prodigy of genius, no power of art anywhere