University of Maryland College Park - Terrapin / Reveille Yearbook (College Park, MD)

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M. iiYLAND AGWeytT ' JRAL rOLL C L THE ORIGINAL PLAN OF THE BARRACKS.

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The Maryland College has enjoyed these liberal pro- visions made by the Congress until the present time ; and by this means has been enabled to secure the ser ' ices of a staff of instructors competent to take charge of many times the number of students for which the State has provided accommodations. On its part the State has granted an annual appropriation of $9000 to provide for the general expenses of carrying on the college work. The interposition of the liberal hand of the Federal Government began a new career for the College. Since the passage of the .second Morrill Act the institution has gone .steadily forward, increasing its efficiency, multi- plying the number of students receiving the benefit of its courses of instruction, and greatly extending the scope of its influence on the agricultural development of the State. This latter growth may be noted by a mere reference to the following lines of work in which the College is the leading factor. Under the terms of the Hatch Act above referred to, the College entered into a mutually beneficial cooperation with the Experiment vStation. On the one hand, the College profits by having available, for pur- poses of instruction, the various experiments, methods of investigation and scientific research, carried on by the Experiment Station ; on the other hand, the latter, by reason of similarity of aims in many particulars, is enabled to have the .services of certain members of the College Faculty ; while together both institutions work for the dissemination of information valuable to the great agricultural interests of the State. There is al.so a verj ' great benefit to these interests resulting from the establishment of the State Fertilizer In.spection, the Department of Farmers Institutes and the vState Horti- cultural Department, all of which are the results of the effort on the par t of the College to extend its usefulness within the sphere of its allotted work. But the influence of the College on the agricultural development of the State does not end here. Recent 3 ' ears have witnessed a great extension of its scope of usefulness by its cooperation with the State Highway Commission and the local Road Commissions, under whose management the roads of the State are being gradually but surely placed on a better basis. All of these evident efforts on the part of the College to make felt its influence for the betterment of the agricultural interests of the State have not been made by it unaided by any other force. On the contrary, it has ever been the aim of the College to recognize and cooperate with the various agricultural organizations existing throughout the State, and to further in every way possible the com- pleteness of such organization. It is, indeed, by an intelligent recognition, on the part of such organizations, of the usefulness of the work which the College has been trying to perform, that has made possible the above extensions of its sphere of influence. Upon this recog- nition, and the .sympathy and support resulting there- from, the College has relied in the past and will continue to rely in the future. And there should be required no better evidence of the fact that the College has been 14

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doing a useful work, than that todaj it has the almost unanimous indorsement of the agricultural organizations of the State. That this should be true augurs well for the future career of the College ; and we think that it presages still greater benefit to those interests upon which so largely rests the prosperity of our people. Resting here the discussion of the extension of the scope of the College work in the line of the practical application of scientific principles to the development of the agricultural interests of the State, we proceed to a consideration of the question of the development of the school as a source of technical instruction in agriculture and the mechanic arts. We have seen that it was the intention of the founders of this College to establish a school for training young men in scientific agriculture ; that, after the vState had interposed to aid the College in its recuperation from the vicissitudes incident to civil war, such idea was widely departed from by the existing management of the insti- tution ; and that such practice, after a number of years, resulted in the withdrawal of the financial support of the State. When the Federal Government extended its aid to agricultural education throughout the United States, a new feature was established in the work of colleges receiving such support. Under the provisions of the Morrill Act of 1890, such schools must provide for tech- nical instruction in agriculture and the meehanic arts. This period marks a new epoch in the development of the Maryland Agricultural College. From this time it has been an agricultural and tncchanical school, though the original name has not been changed to conform to the change in the scope of its work. This fact should not be lost sight of ; for, in the itUention of the author of the Morrill Act, and of those by whose support it became a law, this additional feature was deemed of equal importance to the instruction in the art and science of agriculture. In conformity with the spirit of the above-mentioned act, b} ' which the institution receives by far the most important part of its financial support, the College at once began to make provision for the additional feature of the work. But, in order to give instruction in the mechanic arts, there must be available a building and equipment suffi- cient for the purpo.se. This the College could not, out of any fund available, provide ; for the State appropriation, though not required by law to be so used, was necessar} ' to provide for the twenty-six scholarships which the lib- erality of the Board of Trustees bad provided for the benefit of the people of the State ; for books and tuition free to all students, and for repairs and insurance on the buildings already provided. Moreover, by the terms of the grant, not one cent of the federal appropriations might be di- verted to the procurement of any permanent plant or building, or for any purpose other than for the salaries of instructors and facilities for instruction. In 1894, however, by careful husbandry of its resources, the College was enabled to use enough of its general appropriation to erect a building and to purchase a partial equipment ; and, for the time being, the Department of Mechanical Engineer- ing was provided for. The Maryland Agricultural Col- lege had become an agriculturaland mechanical school. 16