(5) TWO HOUSES FOR PROFESSORS, AND (6) A HOUSE FOR THE PRESIDENT.

The College is located two miles from Ames. No houses can be rented nearer, and few suitable ones even in the village. Professors who live at such a distance, with no means of transportation at the right time, and only mud or gravel roads to walk upon, cannot live in comfort or do good work and best help build up the College. Those who board and room in the main building, as some professors now do, exclude just so many students, and cannot even then have the comforts of home and family life.

It is sojourning, not living, for they have not even an abiding place during our long winter vacation, and shorter one in summer; and are thus practically compelled to leave town, and leave all college interests behind them during the vacation. This breaks up the continuity of work and the possibility of home, and greatly injures the College. In short, our location so far from town, for which the State is responsible, and not the present professors, while it has many advantages for students in the way of seclusion from interruption to study, and from temptation, yet seems to me to make additional houses on the College grounds, for the use of members of the faculty, an absolute and urgent necessity.

The State has in the past recognized that necessity by furnishing dwelling houses for nine professors. It seems to me it should at once provide for three other members of the faculty who just now need houses. The entire cost would be $11,000, including a house for the president.

At present there is no president's house. That occupied by President Welch was ten years ago assigned to the professor and department of domestic economy, and Dr. Welch boarded in the College two years, then built himself a house. This he occupied as president and professor until three years ago. President Hunt boarded and roomed in the College. My family would not admit of that, and Dr. Welch kindly rented me his house, and himself and wife boarded. His death last March left the house in the hands of the executors of his will. They now offer it to the State, with five acres of land, including fine fruit, grapery, etc., at less than two thirds its cost when built eight years ago. It is an excellent house and a beautiful place; well located, and well adapted to the needs of the president of the College.

(7) REPAIRS AND IMPROVEMENTS ON FARM BUILDINGS.

The professor of agriculture and the farm committee of the board have made estimates of the needs here, including painting of the large barns, repairs of foundation, replacing decayed stable floors, re-arranging stables, and replacing swine-house burned some four years ago, and some other items.

(8) ADDITION TO THE GENERAL OFFICE, INCLUDING NEW ROOM FOR

POST-OFFICE.

The government has established a regular post-office at the College. There is no suitable room for it, however. Two additional sleeping-rooms are also needed for the trustees, at their meetings, and to be used at other times for guests of the College.

For further information as to these items I refer to the reports of the different professors in the following pages.

THE CLAIMS OF THE COLLEGE UPON THE STATE.

As to the undoubted obligation of the State to supply the above needs of the College I simply refer to the following concise statement of facts:

First-The State is the only source from which funds can be legally obtained for buildings, permanent fixtures, and repairs thereon. The law of Congress of 1862, giving the lands that form the funds of our endowment, explicitly declares (section 5) that "no portion of said fund, nor the interest thereon, shall be applied, directly or indirectly, under any pretense whatever, to the purchase, erection, preservation, or repair of any building or buildings."

In 1862 the General Assembly of Iowa accepted the land grant upon the conditions and under the restrictions contained in this act of Congress, and thus entered into contract with the general government to erect and keep in repair all buildings necessary for the use of the College. The General Assembly, also, at each session elects trustees. One of the duties of the board of trustees is to ascertain and inform the Assembly at each session what buildings and repairs the college really needs. That board, after full examination at the College, and consultation with the president and professors, has by unanimous vote declared the above amount to be urgently needed, and decided so to report to the General Assembly. As president of the College, acting for the board of trustees, I make this statement of the facts in order that they may appear in

printed form in our biennial report, and be in the hands of each member of the General Assembly. The amount of land received by Iowa in this grant of 1862, being proportional to population, was less than that received by each of nineteen other States, as follows: New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Virginia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Michigan, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Maryland. But from the first the trustees have so wisely managed the grant and the funds, that to-day our income from the grant is, I believe, larger than that of any other State except New York. That is, our income, which naturally would have been less than that of nineteen other States, has been so wisely managed that it is to-day greater than that of all but one of the nineteen. Under the wise management of the trustees and faculty the College is to-day the peer of any similar one in the land in fidelity to its organic law, in the quality of work done, in the proportion of its graduates working in strictly industrial occupations. But it falls woefully behind the agricultural colleges of many other States in the amount of State appropriations for buildings and improvements, especially in recent years.

The argument I make is this: That the State cannot afford not to be liberal in its appropriations to an institution managed so wisely and so well from the first. It is the sound, old argument of scripture, of nature, and of common sense, "To him that hath shall be given." To him that wisely uses trust funds, more shall be intrusted. In this case it seems wise to follow this maxim. Our income from national sources averages $48,000 per year, besides $15,000 yearly for agricultural experimentation solely. This costs Iowa taxpayers not a dollar. By law, it must all be used for instruction, experimentation, and illustration. None can be used for buildings and fixed machinery or apparatus. It seems true wisdom and plain duty for the State to furnish buildings and permanent fixtures and appliances so liberally that this large annual income, which costs the State nothing, may furnish free tuition and industrial training to as large a number as possible of the young men and women of this State. With our income we can teach four hundred students each year as well as three hundred, if only the State will, as it has solemnly agreed, furnish the "necessary buildings."

PREPARATORY WORK.

Already have faculty and trustees unanimously voted that it is our duty to resume and advertise preparatory work. The chief

It is believed to cannot lodge those On behalf of the

argument is that this is necessary in order to reach one main class for whom the College was founded-the farmers. Most of the country district schools do not furnish the instruction required for admission to our freshman class. One half year's instruction at the college would supply this lack. be our duty to give this instruction. But we who come unless the State provides more room. College, therefore, its trustees, faculty, and future students, I bespeak the careful attention of each member of the Twenty-third General Assembly, this winter, to the facts and arguments here pre. sented, and to such additional ones as our trustees shall present to its committees.

The accompanying reports of the professors and officers of the College clearly present the condition, work, and wants of the several departments.

Respectfully submitted,

W. I. CHAMBERLAIN,

President.

REPORT OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.

L. P. SMITH, PROFESSOR.

INSTRUCTION.

In the catalogue for 1889, page 45, we find the following which may be worthy of consideration:

In offering a course in agriculture to those who are to become our farmers in the future, we recognize,

1. That it is native ability that makes the successful man in any line of work, regardless of education.

2. That any education is a help to a farmer.

3. That a man may be perfectly successful on the farm after a thorough training in any line, classical, scientific, or technical.

4. That from a lack of business ability, a man may fail as a farmer after the best college training in agriculture. Education only makes more effective, but cannot change the powers of mind which nature has given.

5. That the best years of life for college work are also the best years for acquiring a business knowledge and training; and, on that account, the college graduate is at a disadvantage when first entering active life, unless he has associated his college work with his late occupation.

With these facts in view, the purpose of the course in agriculture is to furnish to those who wish to become farmers, in the best sense, an opportunity to acquaint themselves with some of the many scientific questions which their daily work brings forcibly before them; to enlist their efforts in working out problems yet unsolved; and, by a study of the applications of scientific truth in daily practice, to deepen and make enduring that intelligent interest in their work which makes the difference between delight and drudgery in the performance of any labor.

The main studies, aside from English and mathematics, are chemistry, physics, botany, zoology, geology, veterinary science, and bacteriology. All students take the studies mentioned above.

Except these studies and stock breeding and practical agriculture, the course has been so modified as to make the purely agricultural studies elective.

The following is a statement of the subjects and the number of students in each, for the past two years:

Stock breeding, 92.

Practical agriculture, 44.

In studies of the senior year, 2.