CHAPTER I

THE BEGINNING OF THE STRUGGLE FOR

INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION

Education for the industries came slowly in this country; yet the idea that the schools owed something to the earth and to the workshop, even as they did to law and to medicine, appeared early and was as hard to down as the ghost of Banquo at the feast.

However, it is one thing to believe in a new idea to the bottom of one's heart and quite another to believe in it to the bottom of one's pocketbook. The unaccustomed opens both private and public purse slowly. Moreover, those who believed in education for the industries to the extent of spending money for it were confronted with puzzling problems. Who should furnish the money, private individuals or the state? Should the new education be made a part of the schools already existing or should new ones be established? It was not until 1851 that a proposal for education for the industries was made that appealed finally and forcibly to thinking men as entirely practicable.

The plan as first outlined described an industrial university that should be established in Illinois and that was needed in each of the states of the union. To this general plan there was added three months later the vitalizing idea that this great proposed system of agricultural and mechanical colleges should be supported by a grant of lands from congress. Now the idea that public lands should be set aside for education had long been approved. By 1854 an aggregate of 4,060,704 acres of land had been granted to fifteen states of the union for the endowment of universities. More than 60,000,000 acres had been appropriated for the establishment of common schools. It had even become a settled policy of the government to set aside in each state as it was admitted a portion of the public lands as a sacred fund for education in that state.

1

Therefore the idea of a land grant for education was not new; its application to common schools and to universities was not new, but there was in the proposal of Jonathan B. Turner, put forth in 1851, an element that was entirely new. It was the project of setting aside public lands to support industrial universities in each state, old and new, and particularly a system of universities or agricultural and mechanical colleges; the land to be located wherever the state pleased on the public domain. This never before had been proposed.

An idea, like a tree, is known by its fruits. This one, then, must have been sound, amazingly vital, for the system it proposed has developed into the largest group of higher educational institutions in the world with a common origin. It was proposed by an Illinois man, Jonathan B. Turner; it was advanced, fought for and developed by a faithful group of Illinois men; in 1862 more than a decade after its first proposal, it was made the basis of an act known as the Land Grant Act, signed by an Illinois man in the president's chair, Abraham Lincoln.

This act provided that the federal government of the United States should make a grant of public lands to the various states for the purpose of establishing in each of the states that accepted the proposition, an agricultural and mechanical college. From this has sprung the great system of public institutions for the higher education of the people along agricultural and mechanical lines. This proposal, although in its definite announcement the work of one man, came as the result of years of consideration on the part of many men.

That the need for industrial education was so keenly felt was the natural result of certain inventions and discoveries; certain intermingling of peoples. By these things men had been led to expect the marvelous. The popular mind was eager for information concerning science and its application. Already the physical sciences, notably geology and chemistry, though scarcely half a century old, had revolutionized certain of the arts, and, when applied to agriculture had produced results that recalled Aladdin and his wonderful lamp. Discov

'For a discussion of the origin of the attempt to secure federal land grants for the aid of higher education see below, p. 156.

eries and inventions and their application to the physical resources of the earth were modifying the occupations and industries. Chemistry was completely changing such arts as iron working and dyeing. Steam had taught men to treat with indifference the intervening miles of sea and land. The miracle of the electric telegraph had shown that there was a force in nature willing to project men's words across the continent if granted only an accomodating wire. Also, war and famine in Europe at the time that steam travel was made practicable brought new people to us. The revolution in Germany, the vine disease in France, the potato disease in Ireland brought men from older countries where the fear of an empty stomach had been an excellent teacher of conservation of the soil.

Naturally in an age of quickened life when everything was being questioned, education came in for its share of criticism. Finally arose those bold enough to say that the "old education" based on Latin and Greek in no way filled new needs. Having said this they wondered, a bit uncomfortably, what would happen; and when the sun got up the next morning just as usual they said it again and added a few words about what education ought to be. Educators, journalists, and champions of the working classes began to think seriously upon what education was and what it should be and for them to think was to talk.

From 1840 to 1850 a well defined movement for the teaching of agriculture can be traced in several of the states. New York and Massachusetts present typical movements in the east, Michigan and Illinois in the middle-west.2

In New York by 1840 the proposal to educate farmers' sons for the farm was by no means new. The New York agricultural society, reorganized for efficient service by an act of 1841, kept the proposal before the farmers. In 1842 a paper was addressed to the state agricultural society urging upon its members the importance of agricultural education and advocating the establishment of schools or colleges where subjects

"In Illinois as in other states, "industrial" education included mechanical as well as agricultural education; greater attention, however, was given to the latter.

of interest and assistance to the agriculturist could be taught. An item of particular interest in the paper is the advice that such a school be located where there would be no exposure to the endless temptations of cities and where exercise, health, and strength of constitution might be secured. Apparently the function of spending years recovering from the effects of foul air and dissipation while obtaining an education, was still to be the prerogative of the classical student.

In January, 1844, a committee of seven was appointed by the society to promote "the introduction of agricultural books and studies in the schools and libraries throughout the state." The members of the committee were John Grieg, Governor Seward, Lieutenant-Governor Dickinson, Colonel John King, James S. Wadsworth, Judge Savage, and Henry O'Reilly. In 1845 this committee presented an elaborate report, which contained, among other proposals, one emphatically favoring the introduction of agricultural books into the common libraries and the offer of premiums for prize essays. "The condition of the youth of this state and the want of teachers for the elementary departments of education seemed unpropitious to the system," said a writer of 1853 reporting in the transactions of the society.

At the annual meeting in January, 1844, the following resolution was passed by the society: "That this society regards the establishment of an agricultural institute and pattern farm in this state where shall be taught thoroughly the science, and after the science, the practice, and the profits of good husbandry, as an object of great importance to the productive agriculture of New York." This was distinctly a forward step as it was the most definite expression of the recognition of the need for agricultural education that had been formulated.

In 1846 Colonel Sherwood of Cayuga, who was head of the state society, declared his earnest hope that the day was not far distant when agricultural sciences would be taught in our schools, academies, and colleges.

"New York State Agricultural Society, Transactions, 13: 530, also for a summary of the history of industrial education in New York.

In that year a number of men residing in the city of New York and vicinity endeavored to persuade the legislature to endow an agricultural college and to locate it near the metropolis. A committee on agriculture of the New York assembly in a report on the project acknowledged that it was aware "that the establishment of an agricultural college and experimental farm has been often talked of, and we suppose may be consonant to the views of many distinguished individuals, and may have become a favorite scheme with a respectable class of farmers in the State." The committee managed, however, as buildings and farms cost so much more than words, to avoid the expense which would follow upon granting the request by adroitly noting "that it partakes too much of a local and special nature." Therefore, the society in 1847 passed a resolution recommending to the consideration of the legislature the propriety of making reasonable appropriations for the establishment of agricultural schools and colleges connected with experimental farms. In the discussion that followed, Mr. Chandler of New York called attention to the fact that men were then sending their sons to Scotland to get the practical education that could be obtained at home in an institution such as that contemplated by the resolution.

From 1848 on, speakers before the New York agricultural society began to outline in more or less detail their ideas as to the kind of an agricultural school or college that they would like to see organized and established. The notion had so far progressed as to be admitted into the circle of respectable proposals; the question now was how to express it practically in bricks and mortar, land and men.

Rev. Samuel Luckey was one of the pioneers who gave freely of time and thought to the subject. He advocated schools, not colleges, and with the object of saving expense, he advised that they be located near seminaries though in no way connected with them. Others advocated the establishment of departments for the teaching of agriculture in the colleges already organized. Still others stood stanch for new colleges, organized for the express purpose of teaching farmers.

'Ibid., 7: p. XXIII.