We have in the record of the meeting of the New York agricultural society, September, 1849, the views of two men well known in their day as promoters of the best in agriculture. Professor John P. Norton of Yale college stated that for two or three years he had been engaged in giving instruction in scientific agriculture and he had found that the great obstacle in the way of improvements in farming arose from the fact that the farmers thought they knew as much as was necessary. One can fairly hear the weary sigh he drew as he said it, the sigh that so many have drawn since his day. Professor Norton went on to say that in the state of Connecticut three-fourths of the legislators were farmers; yet it was with the greatest difficulty that a small appropriation had been procured for the furtherance of agricultural knowledge. The theory that the farmers knew enough already was disputed by the soil itself, for in many parts of the country it had deteriorated shamefully under the established methods of farming. As for a plan for bringing about general agricultural education, Professor Norton said he had none. The one thing which he declared he unequivocally favored was that, by some means or other, education should be made possible for the farmer.

Three years later Professor Norton speaking before the same society had a plan to offer. But it was not one that appealed widely for it proposed that agricultural education be made merely a department "hitched to" a private institution. The popular mind always seemed to sense that such a "hitching" would have no more chance of developing a unique and significant type of agricultural education than the family cow would have of developing a unique and significant trotting record by being hitched to a racing sulkey.

Following Professor Norton at the September meeting in 1849 was Daniel Lee of Georgia. He said the great difficulty was that they were divided on the subject of how agricultural instruction should be offered. Some desired one school, some three, some eight, and some one in every county, "and in this way they accomplished nothing."

At this very time, however, certain practical advocates of agricultural education were making earnest efforts to get the

state to establish an agricultural college and experiment farm. In his annual message to the legislature, January, 1849, Governor Hamilton Fish of New York recommended the endowment by the state of an agricultural college and a school for instruction in the mechanical arts. The agricultural society heartily approved this recommendation and under the presidency of John A. King, it presented during the year 1849, a valuable report to the legislature in which were embodied the outlines of a plan for instruction. It suggested the appointment by the governor of a board of commissioners to mature a plan for an agricultural college and experimental farm to be submitted by the governor to the legislature at its next session. The commissioners were appointed, the governor did his part, a house committee reported favorably but no action was taken on the bill. The friends of agricultural education were bitterly disappointed. In 1850 the matter was again urged and again the legislature solved the problem in a way satisfactory to itself by merely omitting all action. The year 1851 almost brought success-it seemed that the "great idea" was to be given a body at last. The people were heartily in favor, the farmers were becoming alive to the need of the proposed instruction; but again the bill was lost, defeated by a single vote."

For a decade the New York agricultural society and the friends of agricultural education in the state had labored in the

cause.

And there was no more tangible evidence that they were nearer a state college or school of agriculture than when they had begun.

The new instruction in subjects pertaining to agriculture was early present in the minds of the citizens of Massachusetts. An expression of this need is found as early as 1796 in the published proceedings of the Massachusetts society for promoting agriculture.

By 1840 various private schools of secondary grade had been established for the teaching of agriculture. Some of them continued for many years to offer instruction in sciences that were able to help reveal the possibilities of the earth, but there was no college of agriculture.

'Ibid., 13: 532.

In 1845 a committee on agriculture of the legislature said in reporting on a petition for the incorporation of the Massachusetts academy of agriculture: "We are not informed of more than one professor of agriculture in all the colleges of New England." The one referred to was probably the lectureship on agricultural chemistry and mineralogy held by Charles U. Shepard in Amherst college according to catalog 1843-1844 of that institution.

Because of the fact that Massachusetts had no state agricultural society, no such consistent and unified effort to obtain an agricultural college is found, as has been noted in New York. In 1845 the legislature had passed "An act to incorporate the Massachusetts academy of agriculture." It was to be an institution of secondary grade authorized to hold real estate to be devoted to the purposes of education. Again in 1848 the legislature passed an act incorporating the Massachusetts agricultural institute, an institution similar to the one proposed in 1845.

Public mention of the advisability of establishing an agricultural college in Massachusetts was made in an address before the Norfolk agricultural society by Marshall P. Wilder in 1849. The idea did not have to wait for advocates. The very next year definite action was undertaken.

On January 8, 1850, Governor George N. Briggs in his inaugural address expressed his interest in agricultural education and recommended legislative aid for it. The subject was taken up immediately by the senate and referred to the committee on agriculture. Memorials and petitions from various agricultural societies of Massachusetts were received by the committee in behalf of such action. On January 31 a joint committee of the legislature presented a full report on the subject. The report advised the appointment of a board of five commissioners who should consider the expediency of establishing an agricultural college, an agricultural department of the state government, and of appropriating lands of the commonwealth for the general purposes of education. The report, which contained five resolutions, was recommended for adoption and on May 3, 1850, was approved by the governor after the most serious consideration.

The commissioners sent one of their number, President Edward Hitchcock of Amherst, to Europe to investigate agricultural schools. In 1851 they had ready a voluminous report to the legislature. It included the results of President Hitchcock's investigations together with various suggestions of their own. Among other recommendations was one that proposed the appropriation by the legislature of twenty thousand dollars for the purpose of establishing a central agricultural college with a model and experimental farm. The twenty thousand dollars of public money, however, was not to be drawn upon until a similar amount was raised by private donation. At that session the state senate passed a bill to found such an institution but when the matter came up in the house it was defeated.

Thus we see that in another state the only progress that had been made by 1851 was in the awakening of the minds of the people. They had learned to accept the idea but not to grant it their money to put into bricks and men.

At Harvard a professorship in the application of science to the useful arts had been established; but it did little or nothing for agricultural education, though a worthy future. awaited it for it developed into a great scientific school.

In Michigan the need of instruction in agriculture was recognized at an early date. The act incorporating the University of Michigan in 1837 made provision for it. But it was an act that did not function. It proved what Jonathan B. Turner of Illinois contended a little later: that attempting to attach a department of agriculture to an educational institution of the accepted type had no chance of success.

Not until the farmers of Michigan about 1847 became acutely conscious of the need of special education was anything done. It was the farmers through their societies and publications that kept the subject of agricultural education vigorously before the public. The Michigan state agricultural society was a powerful force in these early years of agitation, and two men Joseph R. Williams and J. C. Holmes, stand out as prominent in the work of establishing agricultural education. Direct and able, they were tireless in their chosen cause of bringing within

reach of the sons of the soil an education that would lead to an understanding of the soil.

A convention met in Lansing, June 3, 1850, for the purpose of revising the state constitution. In the revised constitution is found the following provision: "The Legislature shall encourage the promotion of intellectual, scientific, and agricultural improvement, and shall as soon as practicable provide for the establishment of an agricultural school.

"The Legislature may appropriate the twenty-two sections of Salt Springs lands now unappropriated, or the money arising from the sale of the same, when such lands have been already sold, and any land which may hereafter be granted or appropriated for such purpose for the support and maintenance of such school, and may make the same a branch of the University, for instruction in agriculture and the natural sciences connected therewith, and place the same under the supervision of the regents of the University."

Thus provision that could not be disregarded was made. It took the legislature five years to move in response to this provision but finally in 1855 it passed the act that resulted in the opening of an agricultural college in 1857. Thus the first state agricultural college in the United States was opened for work.

The period 1840-1850 found Illinois still a frontier state. The citizens of an undeveloped country are not likely to form themselves into societies and clubs. New settlers usually find that warding off starvation, cold, disease, and storm occupies them completely. Yet the vigorous men who first came to till the soil of Illinois were early alive to the benefits of coöperation. In 1842, in spite of the difficulties in the way, agricultural societies had been organized in nineteen counties. Most of them held annual meetings connected with cattle shows and fairs during the autumn of the year. There was also the Union agricultural society embracing within its corporate limits nine coun

"Beal, History of the Michigan Agricultural College, 1:6. Albert E. Macomber, an early friend of J. R. Williams, claims that the latter was responsible for the provision in the constitution which provided for the establishment of an agricultural college, ibid., 36.