these, and I trust that Mr. E. W. Stewart may be called to superintend them.
Some time since, in view of this matter, I visited certain cattle-feeding establishments with a gentleman whose sound sense on such matters you all recognize, Hon. George Geddes. Said he: "This experiment, fairly tried, will be worth to the State of New York more than your whole endowment, no matter which way it turns out—no matter whether 'soiling' is found profitable or unprofitable; to try this matter fully, and fairly, and scientifically, will be worth more than your endowment."
The act of 1862 also provides with special care for instruction in "branches relating to the mechanic arts."
If you doubt the wisdom of this, look again at the last census. There you find the manufactures of the United States valued at $4,000,000,000, and over 2,000,000 persons engaged in them. Can education be made useful to this vast interest? Other nations think so, and are laying out vast sums in this direction. Some of our sister States are doing admirably in this respect. Illinois and Massachusetts have made excellent provision for mechanical science, and the recent message of Governor Bagby, of Michigan, shows that good work is to be done in that State. In an address delivered before this Society a few years since I described some of those foreign institutions. I trust, then, that you will pardon me for describing that which we have since created in this State.
Thanks to one of our trustees, a noble provision has been added for this purpose to that originally made by the nation.
The Hon. Hiram Sibley, of Rochester, has erected a building, equipped it with lecture-rooms, draughting-rooms, a workshop supplied with the best machinery, and has given an endowment to support a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and a superintendent of the machine-shop. Besides this, Mr. Cornell has erected a shop for woodworking, and has provided water-power for both establishments.
What is the system? Young men come wishing to make themselves first-class mechanical engineers or master-mechanics, or to perfect themselves in any branch of mechanical industry. Under careful instructors, they are carried through the various sciences bearing on their profession. They are taught mathematics in all their relations to mechanics. In one room they go on with the mathematical and mechanical drawing of machinery, in another with free-hand drawing; in the laboratory they are taken through various processes bearing upon their profession. A certain number of hours every day they must give to the workshop, and there, in well-worn apron and rolled-up sleeves, they go on under careful supervision from the use of the simplest machinery and the plainest work to the most complicated. The purpose is to send out every year a body of young men with not merely a very high grade of theoretical instruction, but with most thorough
