Iowa State University - Bomb Yearbook (Ames, IA)

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v;hotographs. This latter method of decoying: young people to come to college may be justifiable from a business standpomt, but it certainly is lacking in good taste, and partakes quite too much ot the style of the private normal schools, the business colleges, and the correspondence schools, all of which educational heresies were an abomination not to be tolerated by this scholarly president ot the Iowa State College. In the early days this college like all others was afflicted by certain infantile disorders. It is really quite amusing to watch these attacks, and. to note how exactly they are reproduced m different colleges. And the amusing part of the case is the firm belief ot each college that this particular attack is the first and only instance of its kind in the educational world. Very early in the history, the the college experienced a severe attack of the student government disorder. While it lasted in theory, the students governed them- relves, making and enforcing their own rules, and metmg out punishment to all who disobeyed them. I say in theory, tor to one who was on the inside of affairs as officer of the week for year after year, this self-government was little more than theory, even in its most flourishing period. Had I the time and were this the place, I could imitate Gibbon in his larger theme, and write the tragic history of the decline and fall of the student government. Such a history would include the humiliating story of inconipetent and weak officials, the consequent disorders in the rooms and hall- ways, the incoming of the powerful forces of the faculty, the gradual increase of faculty control, and the final extinction of the last vestige of student government. Some old-time student of the early classes must write this tragic story, that it may be added to the long list of governments that have risen, flourished for a brief period, and then passed off the stage forever. As we look back to those early days, and bring our vision slowly down the present, we many answer the question as to what it is, in particular, for which this college stands. Such a backward glance over the forty years of its active existence shows that it has not been simply one more college added to the educational facilities of this state. It has stood for something different, so different that during the first years of its existence the educators of the state did not know how or where to class it. It began as a protest against the narrowness of the old education, which looked askance at the sciences when they demanded admission to the college curriculum. That such a protest was necessary the older men remember, for when the sciences were admitted at all they were usually given a distinctly inferior place. It was not at all uncommon to find much lower conditions of admission to the scientific course than to the classical, and for a time the course was but three years in length. The graduate from the scientific course was properly looked upon as not standing on the level of the classical graduate. All this was

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no tools. The makeshifts the excuses, the evasions, that were re- sorted to in order to avoid this daily labor would, if written, fill a volume. At what did they work? The girls worked in the kitchen and dining room, while the boys mopped the floors, hoed weeds in the garden, milked the cows, worked in the barns at odd jobs, worked in the fields, cot down trees in the fringe of forest northwest of the college, dug ditches, helped cart away the piles of dirt excavated from the cellars of the wings of the college building. Yes, every- body worked in those first years, and the practice was given up only when there were so many students and so little work that there v as not enough to go around. You can maintain a manual labor system only when there is much rather simple labor to be pjrformed, and not a great many persons to do it. Then too, that was before the rise of the laboratory and the shop as parts of a college equip- ment. In these, nowadays, the student works, and with far greater effectiveness educationally. It is far better for a boy to spend his afternoons in the soils laboratory, the dairy laboratory, the botanical or the horticultural laboratory, than for him to dig ditches, chop wood, hoe weeds, or milk cows. It was characteristic of the president that while he grappled with some things and compelled them to yield to his will, there were others that he allowed to have their own way, and to effect their own solution. A notable instance was his treatment of the question of the admission of young women to the college. No special pro- vision had been made for them, but when they came they were assigned to rooms and to such classes as they were able to enter. There was no course of study for young women, the two courses being the Agriculural course, and the Mechanical course, and in these the young woman were registered. Some men would have kept them out of these quite unfeminine lines of study; others would have catered to the evident intent of the people of the state to send their daughters to the college. But president Welch simply waited, and watched for developments. So the first girls in the college went into the same classes as the boys. And this not discouraging their sisters from coming to college, when he found that they were in earnest and meant to claim a permanent place in it, he helped the faculty to block out a course in General Science for women. In it were such culture studies as history, literature and language, and that the young women of the state appreciated the value of the boon thus granted them is attested by their rapid increase in numbers. He spread no attractive intellectual feast before the young women of the state to tempt them to enter the young college and swell the numbers of its students; he chose rather to wait and see whether they really wanted to enter the college. How sharply this contrasts with what I frequently see in college management where the at- tempt is made to create a demand by means of optimistically written circulars, lavishly illusrated by beautiful half tone reproductions of

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admirably calculated to discredit the scientific studies, and to keep from their pursuit the strong men in the college. In its past history the college helped to broaden the curriculum of every other college, and thus made a most important contribution to the cause of higher education in this country. Having accom- plished this so successfully, it should now give greater breadth to its own curriculum. As the old colleges learned from the new, so the new colleges must not fail to learn from the old. We taught the old colleges the value of the sciences in higher education, and as a result they have added the sciences to their courses of study. Let us not forget that in our zeal for the introduction of the sciences we gave scant attention to the old studies. It is time now that we should begin to liberalize our curriculum by the introduction of some of the old culture studies. For it is not true that without them we can do better or even as well. Though they may not add to a man ' s earning capacity, they make him a more agreeable man to his fellows, and what is more, to himself, also. Every man should have some intellectual possession that can not be bought, that is above and beyond price. Let us add some of these things to the preparation we give to the man who is to live in the open with his crops and his stock and his family. Let us if possible kindle in him a spark of poetic fancy, that this may make the long days less wearisome, and the loneliness of his isolated life more endurable. Let us add to his knowledge of what the world has been in the generations that have long gone by. Let us give him something from the rich store of philosophy, that he may think of these things when the hours of drudgery weigh heavily upon him. The college has greatly improved the quantity and quality of the com crop in Iowa ; it should also improve the corn grower himself : — h has improved the quality of the cattle in the state ; — let it not overlook the quality of the cattle growers. In your commendable zeal to make better engines, and pumps, and bridges, do not neglect the betterment of the engine maker, the pump manufacturer and the bridge builder. Let us look after the man a little more, not neglect- ing his product in so doing, but remembering him always. And now as I close this rapid and somewhat cursory sketch, let me first of all congratulate you upon reaching this fortieth anniversary. I congratulate you upon the splendid success you have achieved; — your twenty-four hundred students ; — your fine campus ; — your mag- nificent buildings; — your admirable faculty. But more than all I congratulate you upon your honorable history, and that in the early years you had here the great men who laid firmly and wisely the foundations upon which you have so well built this great institution.