year from the patent office fund. The first separate appropriation for agriculture, made in the year 1854, was $35,000, and it has never been less than that sum. An agent was authorized also at this time to "investigate and report upon the habits of insects, injurious and beneficial to vegetation," and a botanical garden was established. The same year arrangements were made with the Smithsonian institution for collecting meteorological statistics. The present United States department of agriculture was established by an act of congress, approved by President Lincoln on May 15, 1862. This act was chiefly due to the strong plea made by Commissioner of Patents David P. Holloway, of Indiana. It is remarkable that the other great act for the promotion of agriculture in America, known as the land-grant act establishing colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts, was passed by the same congress and approved by President Lincoln on July 2nd of the same year, both in the midst of the terrors of the civil war.

The act of May 15, 1862, did not establish an independent department of the government. Its chief officer was styled simply “commissioner of agriculture." He did not become a member of the cabinet until the 11th of February, 1889, when President Cleveland approved another act of congress making the department of agriculture an executive department. The duties of the department of agriculture were (act of 1862): "To acquire and diffuse among the people of the United States useful information on subjects connected with agriculture, in the most general and comprehensive sense of the word, and to procure and propagate among the people new and valuable seeds and plants."

So much of the history of the United States department of agriculture appears necessary to this discussion of agricultural education in the United States. Through its surveys and laboratories, its experiment stations and especially through its numerous and valuable publications it has been the chief agency of agricultural education in America.

THE FIRST AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES

The demand for scientific and technical education did not cease as the years passed by, but grew louder and louder with the development of the country. The history of the agitation in New York may be taken as an illustration. In 1819 there was published anonymously at Albany a pamphlet on "the necessity of establishing an agricultural college," which has been commonly attributed to that active and intelligent man, Simeon De Witt, surveyor-general of New York. He proposed the establishment of an institution to be called the agricultural college of the state of New York, to be endowed by the state and conducted under state authority. The transactions of the New York agricultural society for 1822 contain allusions to the same subjects, and the matter was never allowed to drop entirely out of sight. About 1825 a private agricultural college or school was undertaken in Columbia county. This was the period (1830 to 1850) of the agitation for the so-called "manual labor schools," and many of the schools of the time took that form. The Oneida institute was one of the first of these schools, and it is said to have had a course of instruction in practical agriculture. These were not manual training schools or technical schools in the modern sense, but schools having farms attached where the students could support themselves by manual labor while pursuing their studies. This plan, which found much popular favor for a time and led to the establishment of numerous schools, was soon found to be impracticable and abandoned.

The demand for agricultural education in New York grew steadily, and by 1838 petitions bearing six thousand signatures were presented to the legislature demanding state aid in behalf of agricultural schools. The committee to whom the petitions were referred deplored in strong language "that there is no school, no seminary, no department of any school in which the science of agriculture is taught," and recommended very strongly the establishment of a school of

agriculture. No action was taken at this time, but the matter came up in a different form at each succeeding session of the legislature, and appears to have grown steadily in favor. The State agricultural society helped greatly to advance the interests of the cause, and in 1844 appointed a committee of which Governor Seward, Lieutenant-Governor Dickinson, and James S. Wadsworth, were members, to promote "the introduction of agricultural studies in the schools of the state," and also "for the purpose of selecting books for family and school libraries." It was resolved at the same time, "That this society regards the establishment of an agricultural institute and pattern farm in this state, where shall be taught thoroughly and alike the science, the practice, and the profits of good husbandry, as an object of great importance." This committee co-operated with the association of school superintendents, with the result that that body adopted, in June, 1844, a resolution drawn by Professor Potter, of Union college, setting forth the opinion that "the time has arrived when the elements and scientific principles of agriculture should be taught in all schools." Still the state took no action. Numerous private agricultural schools were established however.

Governor Hamilton Fish first recommended, in January, 1849, in his annual message to the legislature, the establishment of a state agricultural college. During the following session of the legislature Professor Johnson, the great agricultural chemist of Scotland, was invited to Albany and delivered a course of lectures under the auspices of the New York agricultural society. The same year this society established a chemical laboratory at Albany for the analysis of manures, fertilizers, etc. Still nothing was done about the

school.

Professor William H. Brewer, from whose writings many of these facts have been derived, thus described the first industrial college established in New York: "In 1850 Mr. John Delafield, a graduate of Columbia college, where he may have received instruction from Professor Mitchell, was

living on one of the best farms of the state, in the town of Fayette, Seneca county. He was at one time president of the New York state agricultural society, and originated and carried out an agricultural survey of Seneca county. He took a deep interest in the cause of agricultural education, and owing to his action and energy on April 15, 1853, the state passed an act establishing an agricultural college. This act created a board of ten trustees, of which Mr. Delafield was president, but appropriated no money. The college was to be located on Mr. Delafield's farm in the town of Fayette, but as he died October 22 of the same year nothing more was done about building a college there." The Rev. Amos Brown, principal of Ovid academy, situated fifteen miles south of Fayette, who was to become later the chief assistant of Senator Morrill in securing the passage of the land-grant act establishing agricultural colleges, appears to have gotten his inspiration and information from Mr. Delafield. At least when the school at Fayette failed, Mr. Brown conceived the idea of having the charter of the agricultural college transferred to his academy at Ovid. He secured an act for this purpose from the general assembly in 1856, which provided a loan by the state of $40,000. The citizens of Fayette and vicinity had in the meantime subscribed about $50,000. The board of trustees was organized, buildings were erected, and the college was formally opened as the New York state agricultural college in the fall of 1860, with M. R. Patrick as president of the college. The affairs of the institution appear to have been poorly managed, however, as it was found to be too heavily in debt to begin active operations. When the civil war broke out President Patrick went off with the army, and the college was closed never again to be opened. Amos Brown afterwards became president of the People's college near Havana, New York, and after the passage of the Morrill act in 1862 secured an act from the legislature of New York giving the whole of its share of the land-grant to this college. But that institution failed to comply with the conditions of the

law, and the land-grant of the state of New York was turned over to Cornell university, which thus became the agricultural college of the state. This narrative has been introduced to show the growth of the idea which led to the establishment of Cornell university, probably our greatest agricultural institution.

The first agricultural college to be actually established and put in operation was that of the state of Michigan. Article 13, section 11 of the constitution of the state of Michigan adopted in 1850, says: "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." This was the first state constitution to provide for the establishment of an agricultural school. It is noteworthy, also, that it was the first one to provide that all instruction in the district schools should be conducted in the English language. The act establishing the state agricultural college of Michigan was passed on February 12, 1855. The college was located upon a farm of some 500 acres, situated about four miles east of the city of Lansing; buildings were erected, and the college was formally opened in May, 1847.

The legislature of Maryland incorporated the next agricultural college in 1856, which was, however, in part a private institution. Some five hundred citizens of Maryland, and of the District of Columbia, together with a few from adjacent states, subscribed to a certain amount of stock, which the legislature required should be provided. The stockholders elected a board of trustees, and this body located the college upon the estate of Charles B. Calvert, situated in Prince George county, about nine miles east of the city of Washington. The institution was opened for students in September, 1859, when Professor Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian institution, delivered a handsome oration.

Marshall P. Wilder first urged the importance of establishing an agricultural college in Massachusetts, in an address before the Norfolk agricultural society made in 1849. The