POPULISM IN A STATE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION, THE KANSAS STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE.
REQUESTED to give the story of a raid of partisanship upon the Kansas State Agricultural College, I shrink from the task for several reasons. I dislike the appearance of a personal plea, such as any one suffering in the attack must seem to be making ; I recognize the danger of biased testimony from lifelong inter- est in the institution as it was, while the necessary statement of facts in the upbuilding of the college may be taken for self praise ; and I still retain such an interest in the college and some of its faculty as to desire in no way to injure its future. Yet, so evident is the danger to all state educational institutions that I must accept the necessity, and I do it with greater ease in that I may help fair-minded men to do justice to my past associates who have been publicly traduced.
The Kansas State Agricultural College at Manhattan was organized and maintained under the land grant act of 1862, according to which, "the leading object shall be, without excluding, etc., to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the states may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life." In 1879, after fifteen years of experience in the Michigan State Agricul- tural College, I took up the work of developing the Kansas college to the ideal of a college of industries for the people, and with such success as to win confidence in both the ideal and the methods from the mass of the people and the majority of educators. The college had grown from being one of the smallest to the largest of its kind. Its financial management was accepted by every state administration as without question. It was visited by experts from all over the United States, and
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