State treasury for nearly forty years instead of using them for the support of a college, university, or "seminary of learning." In 1857 the accumulated funds with part of the accrued interest were turned over to the State Normal University.

The University of Illinois originated in a plan for an industrial university proposed in a speech at a farmers' convention at Granville in 1851 by Professor J. B. Turner, who, if not the father, was at least the furtherer of the Morrill Act. The Illinois Industrial University was established at Urbana by aid of the Morrill land scrip. The institution subsequently dropped the "Industrial” but not the industry and is now one of the most prosperous of the State Universities.

In Wisconsin the federal land grants for higher education were even worse mismanaged than in Illinois, yet the State University at Madison, founded in 1848, has now some eight thousand students and has become renowned throughout the world for its active coöperation with the people and the Government of the State in the promotion of its agricultural interests and in the solution of its administrative problems.

To go through the history of each of the States in turn to show how they utilized the federal land

grants would be tedious; their early mistakes and final achievements are much the same, differing chiefly in degree. But an exception must be noted in the case of Texas which, entering the union as an independent republic, retained its public lands and so was enabled to make more generous provision for its schools and university than the Federal Government had done in the other new States. The University of Texas has received grants of over two million acres.

According to Huxley, "no system of public education is worth the name of national unless it creates a great educational ladder, with one end in the gutter and the other in the university." Such a ladder now exists in all of the States outside the original thirteen. The ascent is practically free and in most cases open to all on equal terms without regard to creed, race, or sex. Yet the aspiring student is not confined to this ladder, but may climb others if he prefers. The State does not fear competition and has permitted and encouraged rival institutions of all grades to be established. Private elementary and secondary schools are not so common in the West as in the East, but there are many independent colleges and universities in all the Western States. Though founded chiefly by the

various denominations, these institutions make no sectarian discrimination among the students and frequently not even in the faculty, and their charge for tuition is almost as low as in the State institutions. Old animosity has died down, and nowadays the denominational colleges are usually on friendly terms with the State. The State University is usually willing to concede that many of these colleges can give as good an undergraduate education as it can, and the denominational college on its part is usually willing to concede that it cannot compete with the State institutions in the facilities for technical, professional, and graduate training.

So in one way or another all of the Western and Southern States, and some of the Northeastern, have established their own universities as well as normal schools and agricultural colleges, sometimes combined and sometimes in different places. These institutions differ widely in size and standing. Some are small and weak, doing work of a low order and being periodically upset by political disturbances; others rival the largest endowed universities in income, numbers, and the work of their graduate and professional schools. They are much alike, however, in their general characteristics. As a rule, the State Universities charge no

tuition except perhaps a moderate fee in the professional schools and for students from outside the State. They usually provide professional courses in law, medicine, engineering, and the like, but none in theology. The residence halls or dormitories which form a prominent feature of the endowed colleges are not so common and sometimes altogether absent in the State Universities. These institutions are responsive to the needs of the people and quick to provide new forms of vocational training. They extend their influence widely beyond their walls and often carry on scientific, legislative, and financial investigations for the State Government. They form the crown of the public school system and admit to some departments graduates from any reputable high school, giving equal opportunities to rich and poor, to men and women. The American State University may justly be regarded as constituting a distinct type not to be found anywhere else in the world.

CHAPTER XII

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THE RISE OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY

Where the State has bestowed education the man who accepts it must be content to accept it merely as a charity unless he returns it to the State in full, in the shape of good citizenship. . Only a limited number of us can ever become scholars but we can all be good citizens. We can all lead a life of action, a Hfe of endeavor, a life that is to be judged primarily by the effort, somewhat by the result, along the lines of helping the growth of what is right and decent and generous and lofty in our several communities, in the State, in the Nation. Theodore Roosevelt.

THE idea of a State University is older than the States themselves, though the institution was slow in developing and in differentiating itself as a distinct type. At first most of the colonial universities received public funds and were under governmental control. The first constitutions of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Vermont, in the days of the Revolution, provided for universities. The University of Georgia was organized in 1785 and the University of Tennessee in 1794. Any of these early beginnings might have developed into the typical State University; but the honor of being

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