the station bill and to grant to the Department appreciably enlarged facilities for scientific research. Would a display of initiative and mobilized approval from college spokesmen enable the movement for campus stations to capitalize on the receptivity, newly revealed in the House, to the concept of Department-sponsored research in the States? Fortunately for Knapp's purpose, Commissioner Loring before the year's end decided to hold his second convention in January of 1883. Unfortunately, however, the 2-day agenda for the college delegates, unlike the one for 1882, did not permit the station partisans to focus attention on their project. During the sessions devoted to discussions of agricultural education Knapp found no opportunity to obtain a formal show of convention strength for his station plans. Accordingly Knapp, now the acting president of his college, remained at the convention and attended later sessions having no direct bearing on college problems. He persuaded Theophilus C. Abbot, the longtime President of the Michigan Agricultural College and the presiding officer of the Teachers' meeting held the preceding June, to assist his parliamentary maneuvering. Abbot succeeded, on the third day of the convention, in interrupting the discussions in order to give Knapp the floor; Knapp thereupon moved that the convention endorse the Carpenter bill and further moved that Commissioner Loring appoint five committeemen to support the Carpenter bill before the House Committee on Agriculture. The convention approved the resolutions (6, p. 109-110). This parliamentary play placed Knapp and Abbot plus three other land-grant college presidents on the new committee; it furthermore provided the Carpenter bill with the formal support of the colleges and the Department.

The enterprising Knapp, now chairman of the convention's committee, readied his bill for introduction to the new Congress in December of 1883. The bill requested $15,000 annually from the Federal treasury to pay the salaries of employed personnel and the costs of experimentation at an institution, with a farm, to be "established in connection with each of the agricultural colleges. It enumerated a broad list of authorized fields of inquiry covering all known types of research. To the college trustees it gave "general control" including the power to employ a faculty professor as the station superintendent. It placed with a triumvirate (the Commissioner of Agriculture, the college president, and the professorial superintendent) the power to determine "the general character of the work and the experiments to be performed at each station." The enactment of this measure, the Knapp phraseology declared, would "enable the Department of Agriculture to fulfill the design and perform the duties for which it was established . . . to-wit, 'to acquire and diffuse among the people of the United States useful information on subjects connected with agriculture' ." (21, pp. 121–122).

FEDERAL-STATE ROLE OUTLINED

The Knapp draft proposed an astute combination of features which aimed not only to put science and Federal funds to work for the farmer, but also to obtain for each station the services and the resources of the Department and the land-grant college. That draft seemingly placed each station under the close surveillance of the Department and especially of the college; in fact, however, it permitted each station

to remain remarkably free of restrictive control. It entitled each station, for example, to Departmental assistance in planning experiments, but it did not grant the Commissioner a controlling voice in station management or in the expenditure of funds. Although it directed the superintendent to make official reports to the Commissioner, these reports presumably would serve the important purposes of announcing the results of research activity and accelerating the flow of information to a nationwide public. Neither this requirement nor any other made the stations "branch units" of the Department despite the use of the term "national experiment stations."

Knapp's careful phrasing, intentionally giving the impression that an administrative relationship would exist between the Department and the stations, strove to take advantage of the Department's wellestablished claim to Federal support and thus extend that precedent to cover the station appropriation. Nevertheless, Knapp's bill did not place the stations under the administrative jurisdiction of the Commissioner.

Ostensibly the proposed measure gave jurisdiction to the trustees of the college. Yet the trustees had no authority to select the lines of experimentation or determine the character of the work; likewise the college president had a contributing but not a controlling voice in management. The bill did not establish the station as a collegiate department; on the contrary, it placed the superintendent "in charge of said station" and did not define the administrative relationship between the station force and the college. It did require several duties from the college in behalf of the station, however; the college should receive the Federal appropriation and have some responsibility for audit; and implicit in the bill lay the assumption that the college should supply the physical resources, including land, buildings, and equipment. Placing the station under the "general control" of the trustees incurred a collegiate responsibility to the station but it did not, in turn, require that the station serve the college. The supervisory capacity of the college, like that of the Commissioner, remained nominal.

Thus the Knapp proposal for national experiment stations presented, despite its seeming simplicity, a tangle of peculiarities. It did not appropriate funds to the Commissioner for the purpose of creating Departmental stations in the States; instead it granted funds for State stations having only a tenuous tie to the Department. Nevertheless, it urged Congressmen to regard the appropriation as if made to the Department, in order that the grant might rest on the same precedent as the Departmental type. The bill did appropriate the stipend to the agricultural colleges, but it did not place the Grant on the precedent of the Morrill Act.

The Knapp draft, studiously avoiding a direct reliance on either precedent, kept the stations administratively disengaged from the Department and the colleges. It contrived, in effect, to produce a Federally supported station as nearly independent as financial circumstances would permit. This bill the House of Representatives assigned to its Committee on Agriculture in December of 1883.

ABBOT DIFFERED

Meanwhile the prospect of an independent station increasingly disturbed Michigan's President Abbot, whose philosophy of research differed from Knapp's. Abbot preferred the longstanding Michigan system, which assigned "special experiments to special members of the faculty" and welcomed occasional stipends granted by the State legislature to a selected professor for the purpose of conducting an individual project of research on a part-time basis. Research, in Abbot's scale of values, served its rightful place in an agricultural college when, as an auxiliary to the college's all-important function of teaching students, it provided a necessary tonic to the teacher and, in turn, aroused a "spirit" of inquiry in the college students. The Michigan system of conducting research effectively fulfilled this mission and, in Abbot's judgment, had no need for a "distinct" station. The Michigan president did concede early in 1883, however, that if stations were to be established, they should be located at the agricultural colleges (6, p. 19).

The Knapp bill, despite its proposal to establish stations "in connection with" the colleges, troubled Abbot because it accorded farmeroriented research a separate and equal status with student-centered teaching at the college, and intended to convert into a full-time professional occupation the research activity that Abbot wished to leave on a part-time basis. Furthermore this teacher-administrator perceived that the national stations, if founded as Knapp urged, would adversely affect his college and its system (1):

I would not think it well for the college, however it might be with the science of agriculture, to plant here an experiment station to be conducted independently of the various departments of the college and of their separate heads; but if the term [national] means such an enlargement of force and means as would enable our officers greatly to extend their experimental work, I say yes. We have ordinarily done at this college, I believe, more experimenting than any simply experiment station in the United States. It is rather an extension of our work than a superseding of it by a foreign set of workers with new laboratories, that seems to me to be needed. .

...

The sentiment prompted Abbot and like-minded college presidents to contact the House Committee on Agriculture and to urge major revisions in the proposed legislation. Accordingly, the phraseology and content of the revised bill reported from the House Committee by its Chairman, William Cullen, in July of 1884 differed substantially from the Knapp draft. The Cullen bill (7, pp. 34-35) clarified several ambiguities contained in its predecessor. It stiffened the role of the college trustees, weakened that of the Commissioner of Agriculture, and eliminated the possibility of an independent station. It specified that each Federally subsidized station must be organized as a "department" of a land-grant college endowed by the Morrill Act of 1862. It placed the station "under the direction and control of the [college] trustees" and empowered the trustees to appoint a director, his assistants and staff, and a treasurer to receive the Federal stipend.

Refusing to compel the college to bear the entire expense of providing facilities, it authorized the expenditure of a fraction of the Federal income for necessary buildings. The power over policy-making in research the Cullen bill tacitly included within the jurisdiction of the trustees, for it eliminated the explicit provision in the Knapp

bill that the station superintendent, the college president, and the Commissioner of Agriculture should administer this function.

Moreover, the new bill differentiated the supervisory powers of the trustees from the advisory powers of the Department of Agriculture. It specifically forbade the Commissioner "to control or direct the work or management" of any station; furthermore, it deleted the obligation that each station must send reports to Washington and stipulated, instead, that the Commissioner should receive only a copy of the original report to be submitted to the State governor. The bill did require the Commissioner, nevertheless, "to furnish forms for the tabulation of results of investigation or experiments; to indicate... lines of inquiry; and . . . to furnish . . . advice and assistThus the Cullen bill outspokenly attempted to preclude Federal dictation yet it insistently retained the principle that the Department must help the research efforts of the proposed stations.

ance.

The Cullen draft determinedly sought to give to the governing boards of the Morrill Act colleges complete jurisdiction over the station movement and thus provide specific meaning to the historically ambiguous phrase, “in connection with the colleges." Yet the new revisions did not solve-on the contrary they complicated-the problem of constitutional precedents. The careful reduction in the exercise of administrative authority by the Department weakened in like proportion the reliance on the principle of extending Federal appropriations via the Department to agencies in the States. The bill exhibited the troublesome contradiction, which the Knapp bill had tried to mask, that the stations lay beyond the control of the Commissioner, yet were intended "to aid the Department of Agriculture in acquiring and diffusing . . . useful and practical information. . . Obviously reluctant to relinquish the tie to the Department, the draftsmen were equally reluctant to place their bill on the precedent of the Morrill Act.

The determination to organize each station as a college department produced an additional headache for the advocates of the Cullen bill. Could the Federal Government grant money directly to a Statechartered college without the approval of the State legislature? Should not the grant go to the legislature, to be placed at its discretion? Should the Federal Government, on the other hand, surrender all claims to its grant and have no power to require expenditures in conformity with Federal standards? Could not the State legislature in any event exercise final control over the spending of moneys given to a department controlled by a State college undeniably under State authority?

The Knapp draft bluntly met this cluster of questions by requiring each State legislature to "pass an act accepting such trust and agreeing to conduct an experiment station in accordance therewith" (21, p. 122). The Cullen draft eliminated this forceful language and introduced the softspoken ambiguity that "nothing in this act shall be construed to impair or modify the legal relation existing between any of the said colleges and the government of the States in which they are respectively located." That draft did succinctly specify, however, that the appropriation should go "to each State, to be paid... to the treasurer duly appointed by the aforesaid boards of trustees (7, p. 35). This latter provision, so smoothly stated that its simplicity disguised its ingenuity, could supply an administrative

opportunity to a subsidy-minded Congress undeterred by a lack of distinct precedents. Yet that provision bypassed the State legislatures; and it did not automatically clear away the constitutional questions obstructing the path of the seekers of Congressional subsidies for State institutions.

The spokesmen for the Cullen bill (22) persuaded the House Committee on Agriculture to report that bill favorably to the House in July of 1884. But their handiwork did not reach the stage of Congressional debate in that year. Henceforth three major tasks confronted the teachers and administrators who had concluded that the station movement, now showing significant strength, must have a positive relationship to the land-grant colleges: first, to win the approval of station-minded men for the proposals in the Cullen bill; second, by personal contact to persuade the chairmen of the agricultural committees in the two Houses to press the bill to favorable action; and third, to present a line of reasoning which would convince Congressmen that the national interest required prompt passage despite the unprecedented nature of the legislation. Good fortune, skill, and perseverance combined to solve this threefold problem during the following 3 years.

COLLEGE DELEGATES CALLED

Fortunately for the station movement in its time of need, Norman Jay Colman was appointed as the Commissioner of Agriculture in April of 1885. He acted promptly to aid the cause of the college station. One month after taking office, Commissioner Colman called a special convention of college delegates to meet at the Department in July 1885 (7).

Convinced even before he took office that experiment stations should be established at the colleges (14, p. 85), Colman placed the station project on the agenda. He delighted the land-grant conventioneers with his earnest pleadings for "a bond of union and sympathy between the Department and the colleges" (7, p. 15). He then demonstrated his sincerity; he openly encouraged the station advocates and accepted the Cullen bill. In Colman the station movement found, precisely at the right time, an influential and sympathetic friend willing to accept without objection the auxiliary position and the advisory function which the Cullen bill assigned to the Department.

The Convention of 1885, composed exclusively of land-grant personnel, unified support behind the Cullen bill and authorized a committee of three college presidents to cooperate with Commissioner Colman in persuading Congressmen to pass the proposed legislation (21, p. 125).

The members of this legislative committee considered carefully the reasoning they advanced to win Congressional sympathy (23). They determined to base their appeal for funds on two forthright propositions: the duty of the Federal Government to aid agriculture, and the duty of the land-grant college to aid the farmer. "No conviction is stronger or more universal among our own people," the first proposition broadly asserted, "than that it is the duty of the Government, by every legitimate means in its power, to aid in preserving and developing the agricultural resources of the country, thereby promot