So far as their studies were the same, they sat in the same rooms, heard the same lectures from the same professors, were admitted to the same chapel, received their degrees at the same time and place, went through the same ceremonies, and stood as equals on the roll of graduates.
Still the provision for industrial education was wretchedly meagre. Other nations had meanwhile shot far ahead of our own in this respect. Germany, France, and even England, had been aroused. They had recognized the fact that the greatest warfare of the nineteenth century is industrial warfare—the struggle between great nations for supremacy in the various industries, and for the control of the various markets. France had developed magnificently her system, putting nearly half a million dollars into a collection of models for the School of Arts and Trades alone. Germany had established a multitude of "Real Schulen," and of Technical and Agricultural Colleges. England was already making preparations for her great institution at South Kensington, on which she has lavished millions.
But, just as our great rebellion was drawing on, an attempt was made in the Congress of the United States. Years before, that pure and great man, Dr. Channing, had urged that the proceeds of the sales of public lands be consecrated to the education of the people. An attempt was now made; but, though the good sense of Congress carried a bill, it was vetoed by James Buchanan. But the friends of the measure still pressed on. A chorus of optimists, pessimists, sham economists, holdbacks, and do-nothings, opposed the measure; but a true statesman led the army of education. Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont, stood then as now in the United States Senate. Let his name be long remembered. Statues shall be erected to him long after the little great men who tried to thwart him are forgotten. The bill was passed, and it was signed by Abraham Lincoln.
I ask you now to look a moment at the passage of that bill. Centuries hence men shall look back upon it as one of the noblest things in American annals. Why?
My friends, have you forgotten those days, their discouragements, their forebodings, the morning beginning with "would God it were evening," and the evening ending with "would God it were morning?" It was the darkest hour since Valley Forge; lives, laws, family ties, treasure—all seemed cast into the abyss—and the abyss ever growing wider, and deeper, and blacker—and yet, while the American Congress was providing for the most tremendous home policy, and carrying on the most difficult foreign policy of modern times, they found leisure to plan and carry out a great, comprehensive, and far-reaching system of national education.
Gentlemen, it was one of the great glories of Rome in its best days that its statesmen did not despair of the Republic in its blackest hours. Nay, when a victorious Carthaginian army was encamped
