HISTORY

39

wise, the Commissioner of Patents, in commenting on a national agricultural bureau in the same annual report of 1851, suggested to Congress the "propriety of establishing in the Smithsonian Institution a department of Agricultural, and one also of mechanical science."

Furthermore, Congressman Morrill had announced in Congress that he would introduce a bill for the donation of lands to such states as should "establish colleges for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts." Himself a merchant and the son of a blacksmith, he considered that the mechanical arts had a legitimate place in American education. He declared that "there is no class of our community of whom we may be so justly proud as our mechanics," yet "they snatch their education, such as it is, from the crevices between labor and sleep," and "our country relies upon them as its right arm to do the handiwork of the Nation. Let us, then, furnish the means for that arm to acquire culture, skill, and efficiency."" He observed that in Prussia "agricultural colleges, and schools for the mechanic arts and higher trades are liberally sustained." He believed that the farmer and the mechanic require special schools and appropriate literature quite as much as any one of the so-called learned professions. The practical sciences are nowhere else called into such repeated and constant requisition."

He recalled that "more than four-fifths of our population are engaged in agricultural and mechanical employments" and that this vast number "will forever furnish an inexhaustible supply of pupils who will not forsake their calling." In harmony with these contentions the minority report of the Committee on Public Lands to which was referred the first Morrill bill, observed that the Peoples' College of the State of New York obviously intended " to give instruction in agriculture and the mechanic arts, in connection with regular literary" studies and that it was "contemplated to erect buildings for carrying on various mechanical operations."" Likewise, when the land-grant college bill was later discussed in the Thirty-seventh Congress, it was urged, that because great numbers of farm hands had left the fields for the army, it was necessary that labor saving machines be invented.

35 Cong. 2 sess., Congressional Globe, p. 1694.

49

50

35 Cong. I sess., H. rep. 261, p. 8.

hrough the precedents for aid to the first state engineering station pioneer station was organized at y carrying out the ideal of Prostrial University in Illinois. The provisions during the following kewise in 1909 and 1910, respecty-two engineering or mechanic nited States, four of them being maintained no land-grant college. stations would soon be established

onal Association of State Univerversity of Maine insisted that the cities are entitled to as much con-s," and that there was probably ring experiment station, publicly agricultural experiment station. "that the Federal Government s of the engineering experiment the agricultural experiment sta

and experiments in connection with extraction, and manufacture of subs tion of engineering and of other bra industrial pursuits; water supplies distribution; sewage purification an posal; economic disposal of urban an protection; architecture; road bu connected with transportation, manu and such other researches or experi various industries and occupations States as may in each case be deeme to the varying conditions, resources the respective States and Territories

The extension functions of the st least once in six months, to send bull institutions, and libraries interested branches of the mechanic arts" as

During the same year the Nationa sities passed a resolution endorsing " in aid of engineering experiment stat

51 National Association of State Univers For other details of the movement, see I experiment stations, in Association of I 1921, pp. 282-89.

52

between the federal government and the states maintaining the stations; and in 1922, the Association of Land Grant Colleges discussed the matter of engineering experimental work, and suggested that an Engineering Experiment Station Record be published on much the same lines as the Experiment Station Record that is published by the Office of Experiment Stations.

Official Movement for an Office of Experiment Stations and its Creation in 1887. Intimate as had been the relationship between the agricultural colleges and the Department of Agriculture prior to the development of the experiment stations, and great as had been the need for a central agency to assist in the coördination of their labors, that relationship and that need became increasingly vital during the seventies. The agitation for such an office was advanced by administrators. Congressmen, state legislatures, colleges, agricultural societies, and sundry organizations.

While the American universities had the experience of the European universities and the foreign experimental stations for guidance, American agriculture required original experimentation and the solution of problems in agricultural education that were peculiar to the United States under the Land-Grant Act.

The broad provisions of the act; the widely varying amounts of money obtained from the sales of the land; the vagueness and incompleteness of the system of scientific and technical education in all lines, and especially in agriculture; the indifference of the farmers to agricultural education and their demand for the training of their children in other directions; the conservatism of the public and of educators regarding changes in long-established courses of study; the claims of established institutions to share in the benefits of this act; the no less urgent claims of the promoters of new colleges; the local, political, and denominational influences; the industrial conditions in this country-these are some of the factors which contributed to produce the greatest variety in the institutions organized under this act and to vary in still larger measure the attention which they gave to education in agriculture. While it is true that the sciences had begun to make their way into schools and colleges in this country prior to 1862, it is also the fact that for the most part the American colleges were institutions maintaining a single classical course, which must be rigidly followed by all students desiring to graduate. Courses of study in the sciences were yet to be developed, teachers in these branches

Transactions, p. 42.

HISTORY

43

were to be trained, and the system of elective studies was to be organized, while graduate courses of instruction and research were hardly thought of. Technical and industrial education necessarily had to wait until instruction in the sciences, on which such training must be based, had been put on something like a sound basis and had secured a reasonable supply of well-trained teachers and at least fairly adequate buildings, apparatus, text-books, and other equipment.

53

This need of a central agency to help coördinate the agricultural studies in the various colleges was eclipsed by the need of a similar office to supervise the expenditure of the national funds. The law required that these monies be devoted to actual agriculture and not used for university buildings.

But few students in agriculture presented themselves at these instructions as a rule and so the funds were used for the support of other departments. Some of the farmers were inclined to complain of this and to demand that college farms be established for more practical work in agriculture and that manual labor on the farms be required of the students. Where separate agricultural and mechanical colleges were established, there seems to have been less difficulty; but where the work along these lines was given in departments of more general institutions, there was often complaint that the result was "a literary kite with an agricultural tail."

The Patrons of Husbandry interested themselves in this subject in a number of states. In California a committee of the state grange investigated the state university in 1873 and reported a neglect of agricultural instruction and mismanagement of funds; and in Ohio a similar investigation was made in 1877 into the workings of the Agricultural and Mechanical College at Columbus, which has since become Ohio State University."

This agitation spread nation wide. The National Grange in 1876 went so far as to resolve " that the agricultural colleges ought to be under the exclusive control of the farmers of the country, and that it is evident from the experience of the past that these colleges ought to be, as far as possible, separate and distinct schools."55

The National Grange also sent a memorial to Congress in 1887 praying that the appropriation for any state having no experiment station but "in which a college has been established under the pro

53 True, in Yearbook, 1899, pp. 168-69.

"Buck, The granger movement, pp. 291-92.

55

Proceedings of the National Grange, 1876, p. 108.