Iowa State University - Bomb Yearbook (Ames, IA)

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■v-;: .•:••.•■: ■ I pass over the years of waiting to the day forty years ago this morning when the college doors opened to receive its first in- stallment of students. There were big, awkward country boys, two score or so of them, and a score or so of rosy-cheeked, shy girls from the farms and the little towns. How strange it all seemed. There were no old students to greet the new comer. There were no traditions. There were no stories about students or faculty to be handed down with embellishments from upper classmen to lower classmen. Everybody was equally new, and inexperienced. And on the other side was the new faculty. There was the dig- nified and polished President Welch, a veteran teacher elsewhere, but new to Iowa, and to the particular education represented by this college. There was Professor Jones of somewhat severe mien, and with every evidence of being a vigorous, driving personality. And there was the bland Dr. Foote who was to lay plans for a department of chemistry, the energetic Dr. Townsend, and the lov- able Miss Beaumont. It was a faculty small in numbers but remark- able in ability. These were the pioneers who represented the long line of teachers that have followed in the path broken here on the open prairie. And so the work began, a new faculty gave instruction to a new student body. There were only the most meager facilities for instruction. There were blackboards, some benches, some chairs. There was a museum, small in size, but large in the number of dreadful specimens which it contained. With what feelings of horror must those innocent youths first have looked upon the numberless bottles of preserved snakes, the boxes of bats, impaled beetles, and tarantulas, and the fierce-looking panthers and wild cats. It must have been an education in itself for these unsophisticated boys and girls to have spent an hour in this chamber of horrors, learning the lesson that art is sometimes greater than nature. In this young college there were no laboratories, no shops, and only a small library. It was a day of small things. The faculty lived in the building, with the students, the classrooms, the kitchen and the dining room. With the exception of the farm superin- tendent, and the live stock, the whole coUege was housed in one building. It was economical surely, and it saved time for students and faculty. No one lost time in getting to his classes. But this idyllic life was not destined to last long. The cold north- west winds swept down upon the college and its band of teachers and pupils, so snugly ensconced in the big building. There were no trees to check the force of those chilly blasts, and in spite of the efforts of the old fireman the few little furnaces down in the cellar could not and would not keep the cold from creeping in. And right here was the beginning of the winter vacation so long a custom in the college. Finding that it was impossible to keep warm during the winter the college work was suspended until spring, and everybody went home. And this was repeated again and again

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«i Having tije Jfountrations;. (Extracts.) BY CHARLES E. BESSEY. HALF century seems like a long time to us today, and yet I must ask you to go back a littls further still to the beginnings of this collegz when a few earnest men secured the passage of a bill by the legislature providing for the selection of a proper site on which to build an agricultural college. Among these early advocates of the college was Suel Foster of Muscatine. I remember him as a spare little man with a sparkling eye, and a quick, in- cisive speech. Always in earnest, always thinking of the good of the community, not self-seeking, he was a model citizen. Well might this college erect a memorial tablet in his honor, and plant an oak tree to keep green his memory. On this tablet inscribe the words Suel Foster, pioneer, patriot, lover of trees and fruits, advocate of agricultural education, friend of the college. On the tree you plant, place the simple label, The Suel Foster Oak, and as the years come and go, its growth and virzscznce shall serve to remind us that such lives as his live in their good deeds. The spirit of this pioneer still lives on this beautiful campus, and here we should perennially honor his memory. It is a matter of history that when it came to selecting a site for the college, the committee was divided between those who favored this site, and those who. preferred another a few miles east of the city of Des Moines, and Suel Foster told me that it was his vote that brought the committee to favor this location. For many years it seemed that the other would have been the better site, and there were many who ridiculed and denounced the selection, for no place in the state seemed to be more hopelessly isolated. Think of planning to set down a college in a thinly settled part of the state, away from the railroad, and separated from a miserable little village by the almost impassable bottoms of an uncontrollable prairie stream. It required a faith like that which can move moun- tains, to see in this remote site the beauty which now greets the eye. And no doubt Suel Foster ' s prophetic eye saw as in a vision the beauty of this scene today, as it is given to some to catch glimpses in this life of the sweet fields of Eden in the world of the hereafter.

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at- it became a deep-rooted habit which it took many years of agitation and discussion to remove. Sixteen months from this opening day which we are now cele- brating I first saw these grounds. It was a raw February day on which I reached the quite forlorn looking village of Ames. It im- pressed me with its treelessness and small houses with no shrubs and no dooryards, as a village which was all out of doors, and lonesome and unprotected. The drive over the rough, mud road, a rickety bridge and the bottoms of Squaw Creek, was not re-assuring. The main approach to the college just at the base of the hill, and up through the barn yard, by the old Farm House, and then across the fields to the president ' s house might have dampened the ardor of the new comer. But he was young and inexperienced, and withal was an optimist, and he had faith and went forward. What a blessed thing is faith and optimism of youth? It is the faith that removes mountains. It is the optimist that always sees the golden margin of the cloud, no matter how dark and threatening the cloud may be. Look back with me nearly thirty-nine years, and see this campus as the young botanist saw it. There were no drives, no walks, no paths, no smooth lawn, and only a few small trees. There was the large building — The College we called it, the Farm House, a barn, some sheds, the president ' s house, and Professor Jones ' house, these houses being away off on the prairie seemingly a long distance from the center of activity. Probably the present generation has forgotten the story of these first houses for the faculty: — how the early trustees, being of an experimental turn of mind determined to build them of concrete, and actually had the president ' s house nearly completed, when one fair day it crushed down, carrying down with it the astonished carpenters at work on the roof. For- tunately no lives were lost, and the trustees gave up their ad- vocacy of the concrete of that time for the building of houses. The remains of the walls of the two houses were gathered up and used for the foundation of the drive that for so many years had run from College Hall southeast towards the present entrance. If you are inclined to search for relics, go and dig into the foundation of this old driveway and you will find fragments of the concrete walk that fell nearly forty years ago. That was the day of the old time labor system. The law estab- lishing the college required every student to work not less than three hours a day in the summer and two in the winter. And so it was averaged, and every one was compelled to work two hours and a half a day. The students were assorted into squads of con- venient size, and over each was a squad master who collected his men, took them to their work, kept them at it, and returned them and their tools at the end of the work period. For many of the young men it was slavery, that is unvoluntary servitude. They were paid ten cents per hour if they worked faithfully and broke vvw ,. ,,,