FIRST ANNUAL REPORT

OF THE

BOARD OF MANAGERS

OF THE

Rhode Island State Agricultural School and Experiment Station,

MADE TO THE

GENERAL ASSEMBLY,

AT ITS

JANUARY SESSION, 1889.

PROVIDENCE:

E. L FREEMAN & SON, STATE PRINTERS,

Sei 1639.5

A. R 41917

L.GRARY

CHARLES O. FLAGG.

.Abbott Run, R. I.... Pres. and Director, pro. tem.

MELVILLE BULL.......... Newport, R. I

...Secretary and Treasurer.

REPORT.

To the Honorable the General Assembly of the State of Rhode Island, at its January Session, 1889.

In making this, the first annual report of the Board of Managers of the Rhode Island State Agricultural School, we trust it may not be inappropriate to very briefly review the influences which have brought about the passage of the Act of the General Assembly of this State, March 23d, 1888.

GOVERNMENT AID TO EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.

The idea of the higher education came to American soil with the Pilgrim Fathers, for hardly had their feet pressed Plymouth Rock when out of their poverty a year's rate of the Colony was levied, that the germ of a college should be planted in the new world. The solicitous care of the colony is ever manifest through the vicissitudes of those early days, and the pages of legislative record up to the memorable days of Independence bear evidence by more than a hundred different statutes of its nurture and guidance.

What is true of Harvard is essentially true of Yale, for the General Court of Connecticut had carefully considered the founding of such an institution long before Elihu Yale gave the final impulse which resulted in the establishment of the college which bears his name, some sixty years after the planting of Harvard.

The support of Yale college previous to the present century was largely due to the bounty of the legislature of Connecticut, says the first President Dwight in his history. The second college established