University of Massachusetts Amherst - Index Yearbook (Amherst, MA)

Page 22 text:

It was under the direction of Kenyon L. Butterfield that this institution ultimately fulfilled its agricultural destiny. President for a longer period than any other, he tripled our student enrollment, the number of courses, the faculty, and the physical equipment on the campus. Because of his crusading spirit, the little town of Amherst came to be a national center in terms of rural leadership. It was his habit to say the classroom is the Commonwealth, and our extension service is, today, an expression of that idea. The President of the United States solicited his advice; the Society of x merican Foreign Missions enlisted his aid. His enterprise concerned itself with matters of field and pasture and market, but primarily in the interest of a happier and more wholesome country life 18

Page 24 text:

Roscoe W. Thatcher, cut out with a l roa(l axe, as they used to say in the great West from which he came to us, was to see tlie declen- sion of agriculture as a popular pursuit in Massachusetts and to guide this institution from a rural into a scientific piogram. The word agriculture disappeared from the course of study in such fields as chemistry, economics and home life, and the old course in r ural litera- ture, which was gradually becoming a study of Chaucer, was now ofRcially designated under the heading of Social Science. By the same token, the Massachusetts Agricultural College became at this time the Massachusetts State College. Thatcher was a chemist and his spiritual eyes are watching our students at woi-k in Goessmann Labor- atory, where indeed, as the saying goes, he passed away. f ft} jjr .■sr- . . «r S B » ■« - C: » S. Hi I I I I i i I a b - £5Cv . ■ ' -..: .; -«a ft wt. . :S!: S«VCJ -20