Frank S. Kedzie, dean of applied science in the Michigan State Agricultural College, gives the following description of the early days of this college:

There was never anything comparable in a State educational effort to the hardships endured by the students and faculty in those pioneer days. An early founded denominational college in the Middle West, such as Oberlin, had nothing on the Michigan State Agricultural College so far as hardships were concerned. Oberlin had the advantage of carrying forward the work with her students with a well-known and generally accepted classical curriculum. At Michigan State Agricultural College there was doubt from the beginning as to what studies should be offered, how long the student should remain under instruction and whether a degree should finally be granted him. Upon one point was there general agreement-the student should be required to work with his hands under the instruction of men who had had no previous teaching experience to guide their action, but who knew only the imperative necessity for clearing the heavily wooded land which now comprised our farm and campus. For the first 30 years the college required manual labor three hours per day from each student, the labor consisting of felling trees, grubbing swamps, building barns, fences, and bridges, in addition to milking, caring for livestock, and working with teams of oxen and horses-all this was an essential part of the training of the student.

An idea of the inadequacy of scientific data and lack of knowledge with which the teachers in the land-grant colleges contended in these early days when they were attempting to provide industrial and agricultural education to the masses is given in the following typical account by Prof. Isaac P. Roberts, teacher of agriculture in the Iowa State Agricultural College in 1869:

I began to tell the students what I knew about farming. It did not take me long to run short of material and then I began to consult the library. I might as well looked for cranberries on the Rocky Mountains as for material for teaching agriculture in that library. Thus, fortunately, I was driven to take the class to the field and farm, there to study plants, animals, and tillage at first hand. * * * I fell into the habit of taking the students to view good and poor farms; to see fine herds and scrub herds in the country round about, even though they had to travel in freight cars. I suppose I was the first teacher of agriculture to make use, in a large way, of the fields and stables of the countryside as laboratories. One day, being short on lecture

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material, I went into the fields and gathered a great armful of common weed pests. Handing them around to the class I asked for the common and botanical names, and the methods of eradication. This experiment provided material for a week's classroom talk and led me to place still more emphasis on field laboratory work.

Mechanic arts instruction consisted principally of shop work largely of a secondary grade. In the early history of the colleges it was associated with the labor performed by the students in connection with the agricultural courses. Later mechanical shops were established and instruction was given in the various handicrafts. Civil engineering courses were also inaugurated consisting principally of lectures and

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survey work with instruments in the field. The enrollments in the new institutions were generally small. Ten years after the passage of the first Morrill Act in 1882, according to Alfred Charles True,

There were reported to be in the agricultural and mechancial courses in Michigan, 143 students; in Pennsylvania, 130; in Maryland, 130; in Maine, 103; in New Hamsphire, 22; in Vermont, 21; in New Jersey, 67; in New York, 151; and in Rhode Island, 25. In agriculture alone West Virginia had 29; Massachusetts, 139; and Kansas, 50. In Wisconsin, 30 students in the college of arts attended lectures on agriculture. In the land-grant institutions opened after 1867, there were students in agriculture and mechanic arts as follows: In Alabama, 53; Georgia, 151; Kentucky, 181; Mississippi, 5; Oregon, 50; Tennessee, 37; Virginia, 122. In agricultural courses there were in Arkansas, 50; Delaware, 14; north Georgia, 25; Illinois, 87; Iowa, 243; and Ohio, 176."

The total enrollment of the colleges just listed amounted to 2,243 as compared with 164,756 students enrolled in all branches of the land-grant institutions in 1928.10

Notwithstanding the discouragements in operating the colleges, the inadequacies of the educational programs offered, and the small attendance of students, the great achievement of the institutions during these pioneering days was the maintenance of the fundamental ideal of the democratization of higher education. Against an intense opposition, the new movement for scientific, technical, and practical higher education was upheld by the colleges. Dean Eugene Davenport has summarized the services rendered by them during this period of doubt and despair in the following memorandum specially prepared for this survey:

Perhaps the greatest single service rendered by the colleges in the early days was a sympathetic nursery for science and for the scientific spirit; that is, the inductive method of study. Sometimes I have spoken of these colleges as wet nurses for science when nobody else would harbor the foundling, and the language is hardly too strong.

The colleges stood like a stone wall for the education of all classes and for putting knowledge at work for the direct betterment of society in all its interest, farmers particularly, as against the idea of an educated minority constituting an aristocracy of learning and leadership.

That such public-supported institutions are by nature public-service institutions gradually developed as logic corollary to the reason for their existence. The idea that research, education, even formal, is mainly for the public welfare in which the student, instead of being the end product of all educational effort, is a means to an end, gradually evolved as the logical, if not the inevitable consequence of publicly supported institutions of higher learning.

This general idea in the early period was often expressed as the "new education," a composite term intended to include science, education at work as applied to all the affairs of man, and the education so far as possible of all classes, trades, and professions. I will not say that all of these points stood

A History of Agricultural Education in the United States, pp. 117 and 118.

19 See Part IV, Work of the Registrar.

out at the time, in fact, none of them did very clearly, except actual studies in science. But as I now see the perspective, these were the eventualities whose foundation was laid back there.

In the meantime the colleges notwithstanding the hardships of the pioneering period commenced to make progress. While scientific instruction for a time consisted only of lectures, gradually laboratories were established for the conduct of experiments in practical sciences, shops were erected for practical instructon in the technicalities of vocational and mechanic arts, and actual crop and soil experimentations were inaugurated on the college farms. The instructors in agriculture particularly realized that a body of scientific knowledge for the teaching of agriculture would have to be created and they concentrated upon systematic experimental work, the results of which were utilized in the classrooms. With the development of agricultural research in the colleges, although at first conducted in a small way and applicable only to local soil and climatic conditions, the possibility of the tremendous advantage of further experimentation on an extensive scale was soon realized. A number of States proceeded to establish agricultural experiment stations at the colleges, the results of which were disseminated among the farmers through bulletins, circulars, and handsheets. The stations became popular throughout the country and a widespread clamor arose for aid from the Federal Government. The original idea of the democratization of higher education was expanding. Direct service in the form of actual scientific knowledge was to be furnished to the farming classes.

As early as 1883 bills were drafted and introduced in Congress providing for Federal aid in the establishment of an experiment station in every State in the Union. It was not until 1887, however, that the Hatch Act was finally enacted into law. Representative William H. Hatch, of Missouri, chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, was the author of the measure. Senator J. Z. George, of Mississippi, also presented a similar bill in the Senate. As in the case of the first Morrill Act, the Senate measure was passed first and was later accepted by the House upon the recommendation of Representative Hatch in the place of his own bill. President Cleveland signed the act in March, 1887. As a result of the law, the greatest national system of agricultural experiment stations in the history of the world came into existence. It provided that a station should be established in every State in the Union. preferably as a part of the land-grant college, although separated stations were permitted.11 With this enactment the functions of

"See Vol. II, Part VIII, Research, for further details of early history and of establishment of Agricultural Experiment Stations.

the institutions were expanded to include not only residence instruction but also research for the benefit of the agricultural industry.

The Hatch Act contained three principal provisions, the first describing the type of work to be performed by the stations, the second providing for general supervision over them by the Department of Agriculture, and the third for the dissemination to the farmers of the scientific knowledge obtained through experimentation. According to the first provision, the general purpose of the stations was to promote scientific investigation and experiments into the principles and application of agricultural sciences but the specific type of work was also outlined as follows:

That it shall be the object and duty of the said experiment stations to conduct original researches or verify experiments on the physiology of plants and animals; the diseases to which they are severally subject, with the remedies of the same; the chemical composition of useful plants at their different stages of growth; the comparative advantages of rotative cropping as pursued under the varying series of crops; the capacity of new plants or trees for acclimation; the analysis of soil and water; the chemical composition of manures, natural and artificial, with experiments designed to test their comparative effects on crops of different kinds; the adaptation and value of grasses and forage plants; the composition and digestibility of the different kinds of food for domestic animals; the scientific and economic questions involved in the production of butter and cheese; and such other researches or experiments bearing directly on the agricultural industry of the United States as may in each case be deemed advisable, having due regard to the varying conditions and needs of the respective States and Territories.

The second provision dealing with the supervision of the work by the Department of Agriculture contained the following language:

That in order to secure, as far as practical, uniformity of methods and results in the work of said stations, it shall be the duty of the United States Commissioner (now Secretary) of Agriculture to furnish forms, as far as practicable, for the tabulation of the results of investigation or experiments; to indicate, from time to time, such lines of inquiry as to him shall seem more important, and in general, to furnish such advice and assistance as will best promote the purpose of this act.

Of vast importance was the third provision providing for the dissemination of the results of the research to the agricultural industry thus assuring a direct public service. In order that there might not be any possibility of this provision not being carried into effect, the privilege of sending the literature of the stations through the mails under the Government frank was extended. The part of the law covering the subject was as follows:

That bulletins or reports of progress shall be published at said stations at least once every three months, one copy of which shall be sent to each newspaper in the States or Territories in which they are respectively located, and to such individuals actually engaged in farming as may request the same and as far as the means of the stations will permit. Such bulletins or reports

and the annual reports of said stations shall be transmitted in the mails of the United States free of charge for postage, under such regulations as the Postmaster General may from time to time prescribe.

The act appropriated from the National Treasury the sum of $15,000 annually for the maintenance of each station conditional upon legislative assent by the different States. While the subsidy of the Federal Government was not large, it was the great stimulus for creating an experiment station in every State and for further placing an obligation upon the State governments for their support through public taxation.

With the gradual growth of the colleges, the new type of resident instruction commenced to meet with popular favor and to command a greater respect in the higher educational field. Definite programs of study and well-organized curricula focused around the practical application of the sciences to the industrial problems of the Nation. were adopted and offered in the institutions. Enrollments of students increased. Finally, in 1890, it was decided to make a new appeal for Federal aid, the funds to be used for the further develop. ment of the democratized higher education. Mr. Morrill, who as representative in the lower house of Congress sponsored the first Morrill Act, had now become a United States Senator from Vermont and undertook the task of securing additional assistance for the colleges. In 1890 he introduced his second land-grant college bill in the Senate which provided for the appropriation of $25,000 annually by the Federal Government from the proceeds of the sales of public lands for the support of the colleges. Under the terms of the measure the institutions were to receive $15,000 in 1890 with an additional sum of $1,000 each succeeding year for the 10 years when the annual appropriation was to amount to $25,000. The law specifically provided that the Federal funds were to be expended only for instruction in "agriculture, the mechanic arts, the English language, and the various branches of mathematical, physical, natural, and economic sciences with special reference to their application to the industries of life and to the facilities for such instruction." 12 A particular feature of the bill was that there was to be no racial distinction between students in the colleges but that separated landgrant colleges for negroes might be organized. The result of this provision was that negro land-grant colleges were established in all of the Southern States.13 The second Morrill bill after being amended passed the Senate unanimously in June, 1890, and the House of Representatives by a vote of 135 to 39 in August. It was signed in the same month by President Harrison.

12 Second Morrill Act, 1890.

12 See Vol. II, Part X. Negro Land-Grant Colleges.