Entirely apart from the wisdom or unwisdom of this appropriation of money by the federal government, it is important that the people of the United States should understand clearly what is being done. More and more the money of the federal treasury is being sought for educational projects of one kind or another in the separate states. In the long run there will come undoubtedly some demand for a more direct supervision of education by the federal authority. If this policy is to be entered upon, it should be taken up with a clear conception of what it means. Perhaps no circumstance of the original Morrill legislation was more remarkable than the entire absence of any educational conception as to what sort of colleges were to be created out of the money supplied by the central government. Indeed, a large proportion of the members of Congress did not expect institutions of college grade. This whole legislation,—so momentous in its consequences, resulting in the establishment of institutions throughout all the states,-primarily educational in its scope and in its consequences, was carried out from the beginning to the end with almost no consideration of the educational problems involved. It is not too much to say that for the first fifty years of their existence the colleges thus established did very little to advance the interests of agriculture or to minister to the needs of the young men and young women on the farm. It is only within the last few years that they have addressed themselves directly to this problem. The attitude of the federal government toward education is to-day, and will become increasingly, a matter of concern to every state and to every citizen. The Morrill Act of 1862 was the first step in a governmental policy which carries with it results of great financial magnitude and of far-reaching importance politically and educationally. It is the purpose of this Bulletin to set forth in simple fashion the beginnings of that policy and to describe the legislative procedure by which the policy of federal aid to state education was inaugurated. As to the development of this policy in the future and its importance, the American people will themselves decide. The collection of this information was begun by Mr. Monell Sayre seven years ago. When he left the Foundation the work was taken up and carefully completed by Dr. Kandel. HENRY S. PRITCHETT. HISTORY OF THE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE GRANT OF 1862 THE proposal that federal aid should be given to the states for agricultural education first came before the legislative branch of the government in the Thirty-fifth Congress. The first bill on the subject was introduced in the House of Representatives, on December 14, 1857, in the First Session of the Congress, by Mr. Morrill of Vermont. Justin S. Morrill, after passing thru the primary school and high school of his native Vermont, had begun life as a merchant, and after succeeding in that pursuit, had turned his attention to farming. His first active participation in public life occurred in the first congressional contest in which candidates of the Republican party appeared, when he was elected to the Thirty-fourth Congress. Mr. Morrill was thus beginning his second congressional term when he introduced the bill. As he was already nearly fifty years of age in 1857, few would have imagined that his legislative service would continue without interruption until almost the twentieth century. Taking his seat in the House when the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was the great topic of public discussion, Mr. Morrill was still sitting in the Senate when the Treaty of Paris brought before that body the disposition of the Philippine Islands. But he showed in the Thirty-fifth Congress, almost at the beginning of his legislative career, the skill in parliamentary procedure and the knowledge of men which in 1861 caused the House to commit into his charge the great War Tariff Bill, and in the Senate placed him for many years at the head of the powerful Committee on Finance. The proposal that the United States should begin a policy of assisting the states for agricultural education could not have been entrusted to firmer or more skilful hands. The bill (H. R. 2) granted six million three hundred and forty thousand acres of the public land to the states, each state receiving twenty thousand acres for each senator and representative in Congress to which it was entitled under the census of 1850, the proceeds to be used in maintaining colleges of agriculture and the mechanic arts. According to the rules of the House, the appropriate committee to consider a proposal of this character was the Committee on Public Lands. Mr. Morrill, however, moved that the bill be referred to the Committee on Agriculture of which he himself was a member, and ordered to be printed. On Mr. Cobb's protesting against the order to print a bill on its introduction and reference, Mr. Morrill withdrew that part of his motion. Mr. Letcher of Virginia objected to the reference of the bill to the Committee on Agriculture on the ground that it would probably be reported back with leave to refer to the Committee on Public Lands. On the following day, December 15, the reference of the bill came up again, the motion of Mr. Letcher of the previous day pending that the bill take its usual course to the Committee on Public Lands. Mr. Morrill pointed out that the duties of the Committee on Agriculture were not defined, that the House could use its discretion in referring the bill to any committee, and that since the bill did not take charge of public lands, it should go to a committee of its friends. The House voted, however, to refer the bill to the Commit tee on Public Lands. The bill remained in the custody of the Committee on Public Lands for four months, until on April 15, 1858, it was reported back to the House. Mr. Cobb of Alabama, the chairman of the committee, made the report, and announced to the House that he reported the bill adversely and yielded to Mr. Walbridge of Michigan, who wished to present a minority report from the committee of those members who favored the bill. Mr. Walbridge made a motion that the report of the committee and the views of the minority be printed, "so that every gentleman may act advisedly upon the subject" before taking up the discussion on the bill. Before a vote could be taken upon this proposition, the time known in the House as the "morning hour" expired, and the consideration of the subject was laid aside. Mr. Walbridge secured permission to have the reports printed on the following day, April 16, "pending the motion to postpone." The "morning hour" came up in the routine of the House for the next time on April 20, and the Speaker announced that the pending motion was a motion to postpone consideration of the bill to the 21st. Mr. Morrill thereupon delivered a speech submitting a substitute bill to be recommitted to the Committee on Public Lands. Mr. Morrill began his address by reminding the House of the literal bombardment of petitions it had undergone on this subject from "the various states, North and South," state societies, county societies, and individuals. Hardly a day had passed since the beginning of the session that had been without some petition in favor of this bill. Congress had legislated for all other classes of the community; it had protected authors by means of copyright laws, it had given encouragement to inventors by patent legislation, and so on thru a long enumeration of interests whose welfare had been considered. "All direct encouragement to agriculture has been rigidly withheld," but "when commerce comes to our doors, gay in its attire and lavish in its promises, we 'hand and deliver' at once our gold. When manufactures appears, with a needy and downcast look, we tender, at worst, a 'compromise."" Federal aid in favor of agriculture, Mr. Morrill contended, was imperatively needed. So defective is the method of agricultural cultivation that year by year the American soil is becoming poorer, and "many foreign states support a population vastly larger per square mile than we maintain." The one way to overcome this condition, Mr. Morrill continued, was to enable each profession to educate itself. "The farmer and the mechanic require special schools and appropriate literature quite as much as any one of the so-called learned professions. . . . It is plainly an indication that education is taking a step in advance when public sentiment begins to demand that the faculties of young men shall be trained with some reference to the vocation to which they are to be devoted through life.” A system of agricultural colleges would interfere in no way with the existing literary colleges. Mr. Morrill then proceeded to outline the definite purposes that the proposed agricultural colleges would fulfil. "We need a careful, exact, and systematized registration of experiments such as can be made at thoroughly scientific institutions, and |