Chapter VI.

RETROSPECT OF UNIVERSITY LEGISLATION.

Reverting to legislation looking to increased endowment of the university, the records show that in the fifteenth legislature, during Governor Coke's administration, in 1876, Senator Stephens introduced "An act to provide for the location and survey of 1,000,000 acres of the public domain of the State for the endowment, maintenance, and support of the University of Texas." Senator Terrell also introduced a bill to set apart 1,000,000 acres of the unappropriated public domain for the establishment and maintenance of the University of Texas and for that purpose to recover from location the lands belonging to the State within the borders of Greer County. Neither bill passed, and since then Greer County has been decided not to belong to Texas.

Subsequent notable action by the State was that of the eighteenth legislature, in 1883, granting "1,000,000 acres to the university and its branches, including the branch for the education of the colored youth of the State;" the action of the twentieth legislature appropriating but $40,000, with "the loan of $125,000," to the university out of the million dollars indemnity money from Washington; and the action of the next legislature, which, to help the university to finish its main building at Austin, had to guard an appropriation of $25,000 from general revenue to afford ready means for the university's purposes by expressing it as for "support of the university," and requiring that "the university should use a like amount of its available fund to finish the building;" and an act of the twenty-fourth legislature, in 1895, transferring to the regents control of the university lands.

EFFORTS TO "START THE UNIVERSITY."

Governor Roberts attended a session of the State Teachers' Association, held at Mexia, in 1880, and expressed his views upon the propriety of inaugurating a movement for the establishment of the State University, and asked the countenance and assistance of that body in the effort not that the State was then able to establish it on a large scale, he said, but that it could be started, and until it was started it would never be known and appreciated what such an institution

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required for its successful operation. The subject was discussed by the association, and a committee was raised to memorialize the legislature, through the governor, in favor of it. The committee was composed of Oscar H. Cooper, chairman, and W. W. Crane, S. G. Sneed, R. W. Pitman, Smith Ragsdale, John G. James, and O. N. Hollingsworth. According to a published sketch of Governor Roberts

The memorial contained the recommendation of the main features of the bill that afterwards became a law for the establishment and organization of the university. Having been handed to the governor by the chairman, it was presented, with his message, to the legislature January 28, 1881. The governor had two days previously urged the propriety of at once establishing the university at the State capital for numerous reasons, and that it should be open for females as well as males qualified to enter. His official suggestions doubtless had great weight in influencing the vote of the people to locate the institution at the capital of the State, where, as a rule, all State institutions should be established.

The bill, it was stated, was drawn up by Professor Cooper, assisted by one of the committee, O. N. Hollingsworth, and after being submitted to the governor was handed to Senator John Buchanan, of Wood County, through whom, as chairman of the committee on education, it was laid before the senate. The journal of the legislature shows that Senators Buchanan, A. W. Terrell, of Travis; Wynne, of Rusk; Gooch, of Anderson, and Stubbs, of Galveston, were active in carrying it through in the senate and that it passed the house of representatives without any serious difficulty.a

The probability is, as stated in Scarff's Comprehensive History of Texas, that Governor Roberts, who favored "starting the university" without waiting for some indefinite period for vast resources to be accumulated to inaugurate it on some grand plan, personally appeared before the State Teachers' Convention, at Mexia, to prevail upon it to consider the matter of devising a plan to put the institution at once into practical operation; that the plan was subsequently formulated, at a second meeting of the association, which at his instance met at Austin, and, through a committee, prepared a bill which was submitted to the legislature for organizing the university; and that this is the bill which, with some changes, credited mainly to Representative Hutcheson, of Harris, and Senator Terrell, of Travis, was finally enacted, and under which the university is now being operated.

a In conflict somewhat with this statement, the present writer heard Hon. J. C. Hutcheson, of Houston, state in a public address before the literary societies of the university, at Austin, that he "had the honor of introducing the bill creating the University of Texas," as if he were, though he did not say he was, the exclusive author of the bill. Altogether, the contention in the matter has been about as heroic in spirit, though not in consequences, as the contest over the birthplace of Homer, and just about as unimportant, so far as the public is concerned, since similar bills were pending, and the establishment of the university was not an original concept with the authors of any of them, such an institution, in fact, having been in contemplation by the founders of the Republic of Texas.

PROPOSED GRANT OF 2,000,000 ACRES.

Governor Roberts, in his message to the seventeenth legislature in 1882, in support of the proposition to grant the university 2,000,000 acres of land, forcibly argued:

The whole question about the establishment of a first-class university and its branches is: Shall Texas give her own native-born sons and daughters the facilities for fitting themselves to occupy those higher walks, so necessary in the proper direction of her future destiny, or will she leave her own sons and daughters to be kept in a lower sphere of life, and be therein directed by the learning and skill of strangers, sons and daughters of other States, who will come here and fill the places which her own sons and daughters ought to occupy and will occupy if they are given a fair opportunity? Every great State should rear its own men in every stature of manhood, of intelligence, and of culture, according to their capabilities, upon its own soil, and thereby engender and preserve an intense homogeneousness in the character of its population, which must result in the concentrated power and elevated prosperity of the whole body politic in association. This full result can be attained only by promoting all the grades of education, from the lowest to the highest, in harmonious cooperation adapted to the diversified wants of every class of people whatever may be their pursuits in life. Nor will the benefits of the university and its branches be confined to the sons of the wealthy few. By no means will that be so. Place the facilities of a higher education before the people of the State, make it a reality, make it complete and cheap by a splendid endowment, and youths all over this broad land who catch the inspiration of high native talent in our common schools will, if necessary, struggle up through poverty and through adversity, by labor and by perseverance, until they will stand in the front ranks of the most gifted and favored in the halls of learning, and afterwards will adorn every sphere of life with their brilliant accomplishments and practical usefulness. So it has been in other countries and so it will be here. By adding 2,000,000 acres of land to the 1,000,000 acres heretofore set apart for the university, and making proper arrangements for its disposition, a permanent fund might be accumulated that would ultimately be adequate to meet the expenses of establishing and maintaining a first-class university.

ARGUMENT OF SENATOR TERRELL.

Said Judge Terrell in his speech in the State senate on the pending proposition, which had been changed so as to set aside in addition to the 2,000,000 acres of land to endow the State University a like amount for public free schools

Such is the message sent to us by the grand old man who sits yonder in the executive office, himself a child of adverse fortune who struggled up through poverty to a higher education.

The proposition was changed to embrace an equal grant to the schools in order to placate those who regarded the university as a "spoiled child," which, despite its chastisements by the legislature, should not be petted without caressing the State's more favored educational pets, the public schools. In further speaking upon the measure, Judge Terrell, who as a State senator more effectually perhaps than any other man in the State advocated the legislation necessary, not only to promote the organization of the university but to put the free-school system

provided for by the constitution of 1876 into operation, expressed himself in the following eloquent and impassioned terms:

The cry that the university will be a "rich man's school" can impose on no one. The rich can send their sons and daughters abroad to other States, as they do now, but Texas needs, both for them and her poor boys especially, a fountain of learning, covering the whole field of knowledge of which all may taste. But suppose it is a school for the benefit of those favored by fortune, in the name of common justice, who should object? The property holders of the State draw from their pockets every year the means by which the poor are educated. One-fourth of all the taxes of the State is paid to teachers to instruct the children of the thousands who pay no taxes, and of the common property 50,000,000 of acres already surveyed have been granted as a perpetual fund to endow the common schools forever. When those who own the land and pay the taxes have been thus liberal with the taxes which they pay every year, who dare complain if the State shall endow a university to afford the sons and daughters of the same taxpayers the means of more advanced instruction? I fail to appreciate the statesmanship which panders to class prejudice, grows eloquent over "common schools," on the eve of an election, and yet hangs on the wheels of intellectual progress because all men are not rich. Nor, further, can I understand that statesmanship which would limit the aspirations of our bright-eyed boys and girls to such knowledge as the common schools will bestow.

After forty years of independence and prosperity, where, to-day, are the distinguished linguists, mathematicians, geologists, civil engineers, and other highly learned men who have been educated in Texas? There is not one. With great resources always at our control, a generation has been raised with only such opportunities as the country schools could afford. If a strange mineral is found in your land you must send it out of Texas to be assayed, or import a man to tell you what it is. If waterworks, gasworks, or manufactories are to be established in your towns, you must send abroad for educated brain to construct and operate them. If a railroad is to be built, its course and grades must be determined by engineers educated abroad. Nor is this all; the science and skilled labor which we need must be imported from a section which has been instructed by demagogues to look on the South with suspicion and distrust. What has been the result? Your best water power is not utilized, for the people who own it know nothing of manufacturing enterprises which give it value, and capital, always timid, comes slowly and with distrust. The mineral veins of your mountains remain hidden from your sight, for you have not sent out to each county educated geologists to tell you where they are. Your products, instead of being manufactured here at home, bringing wealth and affording employment to labor, go North to enrich other States whose educated sons hold a mortgage on all our industries. Hewers of wood and drawers of water we must remain unless advanced education shall relieve us.

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He clearly showed that the university as contemplated by the constitution and established by the legislature was a public free school for those who seek instruction in the higher walks of education-a common free university, the capstone and head of the free-school system." Continuing his argument, he said:

It is the misfortune of this session that we can attempt nothing useful for the State without having the claims of railway certificate holders thrust before us. Before we could pass a bill introduced by me to stop the surveying and speculative waste of 8,000,000 acres of land in the Panhandle and Texas Pacific reservation, we had to listen for two days to the argument that railway land certificates should cover that territory, that their holders had vested rights, and I was then accused of

seeking to tie up that country for the use of the university. Now, when the claims of this free high school are presented, the same cry is raised, and we are told that if we appropriate any of this land to the benefit of our children it will be an act of bad faith on the part of the State to those who hold railway certificates.

Judge Terrell also contended that the action of the State convention which made the constitution of 1876 was violative of the property guaranties of the Federal Constitution in depriving the university of a large portion of its landed endowment, including 700,000 acres which it then owned under existing laws, and 1,500,000 acres which would accrue to it from the tenth sections of the railroad surveys. This could neither be done, he held, by the constitution nor laws of a State; yet here was the university, a legal entity, created by the act of 1858, endowed with capacity to receive grants, deprived without process of law of a vast endowment, without a question being raised and without exciting a murmur of complaint. "The reason of this submission," he declared," is manifest; the victims were children, and their only guardian was the State, which perpetrated the wrong.”

ONLY ONE MILLION ACRES GRANTED.

Despite all the earnest pleadings in behalf of the university the bill to appropriate 2,000,000 acres to the university did not pass; but subsequently, in 1883, the eighteenth legislature granted 1,000,000 acres each to the free schools and the university. The bill passed the senate after a gallant fight for it led by Senator Terrell, and went to the house. Here the real opposition was developed, as stated in the Houston Post:

The anti-university men began preparations for the funeral of the bill. Just at this critical moment Hon. J. E. Hill, of Polk County, came to the rescue, and by an adroit movement saved the measure by an amendment providing for a donation of a like number of acres for the common-school fund. This captured the opposition, because to vote now against the bill was to vote against a free-school appropriation. This ruse was successful, the opposition melted away sufficiently to allow the bill to pass, and at least partial restitution to the university was accomplished.

In connection with the strange opposition to the university referred to by Judge Terrell, how, it may be asked, would Tesla have succeeded with but a common school or ordinary college education; and as to those with little or no education who succeed by dint of superior genius, how much more successful they might be with the added benefits of university instruction! As Col. Maunsel White, a distinguished citizen of New Orleans, father of Judge White, of the United States Supreme Court, observed of Louisiana in a letter to De Bow's Review, in 1847, arguing in favor of a university, so of Texas:

The surprise should not be that the State has produced of her own growth so few men of commanding abilities and information, but that she has produced any at all. Of common schools, those nurseries of early youth, where character for life is formed, and