網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

The result was a surprise to many and a great disappointment to the Agricultural College.

To their astonishment and to the amazement of friends of education through. out the land, the whole of this vast fund was bestowed upon a college which had never for a day opened its doors for pupils, and which does not possess the sym pathy of the leading farmers throughout the State.'

The terms of the grant were certainly sufficiently liberal. The trustees were to satisfy the regents of the State within three years from the passage of the bill that the college was prepared with ten competent professors to give instruction in branches related to agriculture, mechanic arts, and military tactics; that it possessed suitable accommodations for at least 250 students; that it owned a farm of at least 200 acres for the practical teaching of agriculture and suitable shops for the teaching of mechanic arts; and that it possessed a suitable library and philosophical and chemical apparatus. Upon satisfactory evidence that it had fulfilled these conditions it was to come into the full enjoyment of the income from the land grant.

3. LOSS OF THE SCRIP BY THE PEOPLE'S COLLEGE.

The history of the efforts and the failure of the People's College to retain the prize it had grasped can not be followed in detail. After a lapse of two of the three years prescribed it became evident that nothing would be done by that institution. In accordance with a resolution of the senate, the board of regents undertook an investigation of the conditions and prospects of the college with a view to determining whether, in their opinion, it would be able to fulfill the conditions of the act under which it received the grant. Their report disclosed that the college owed chiefly whatever material possessions it could boast to its patron, Mr. Cook. These, however, were far from munificent. A single building had been erected at a cost of $60,000, and upon this the patron held a lien for $31,700. In addition it had a subscription from Mr. Cook of $25,000 and had received from other sources about $14,000. Its domain consisted of 100 acres of land. All told, its entire property did not exceed $70,000 in value.2 Its prospects were not flattering. Mr. Cook, who had been relied upon to meet the requirements of the grant, began to cool in his enthusiasm for the college. Mr. Howard says:

After Mr. Cook was sick and had a paralytic shock, he was never quite himself again. Nothing that could be said to him would induce him to go on with the work, advance the means to comply with the conditions of the law, and save the land.3

The consequence was that the People's College practically gave up the struggle to retain the grant, or, indeed, to be a college. Under

1

Report of trustees of Agricultural College, sen. doc. 55, 1864.
2 Senate Docs., 1865, No. 45.

3 Howard MSS.

the name of Cook Academy the institution has continued its work as a preparatory school down to the present day, but the "People's College" never having had vitality enough to seize firmly or to retain the great land grant, permitted the prize to drop from its nerveless grasp, and so disappeared from the history of higher education to which it contributed nothing but a name.

II.

THE FOUNDING OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

A. THE FOUNDERS.

The meeting of the legislature of 1864 brought together for the first time two men whose names are indissolubly connected with Cornell University-from one of whom it took its name and its material prosperity and from the other its educational spirit and purpose-Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White. Never were two associates in a great work more unlike in temperament, training, and tastes. Mr. Cornell was then 57 years of age, and from his earliest boyhood had been inured to hard and often rough work, from which by his persistency and foresight he had risen to a position of wealth and influence. His education had been won during the winter terms of district schools. His training in the hard school of experience, coupled with his Quaker origin, had given him a reserved and austere air, which his tall, spare figure and firm-set mouth tended to emphasize. He seemed the embodiment of New England shrewdness, austerity, and success.1 Mr. White, on the other hand, was but 31 years old, the youngest, as perhaps Mr. Cornell was the oldest, member of the senate. He was a graduate of Yale, a student of several of the foremost universities of Europe, a professor of history in the University of Michigan, withal a man of the highest culture and broadest sympathies. Graceful, polished, an eloquent and effective speaker, a ready debater, of an enthusiastic temperament, he seemed in all things the very opposite of the grave and quiet man of business with whom he was associated. Yet in the brains and hearts of these two men lay the germ of Cornell University.

Mr. White has himself told how these two natures, apparently so different, were brought into contact:

Upon the announcement of committees, our paths seemed separated entirely, for he was made chairman of the committee on agriculture, while to me fell the chairmanship of the committee on education.

And yet it was this last difference which drew us together; for among the first things referred to my committee was a bill to incorporate a public library which he proposed to found in Ithaca.

On reading this bill I was struck, not merely by its provision for a gift of $100,000 to his townsmen, but even more by a certain breadth and largeness in his

1 For biographical authorities for Mr. Cornell's life and character, see bibliography in appendix to this sketch.

way of making it. The most striking sign of this was his mode of forming a board of trustees; for, instead of the usual effort to tie up the organization forever in some sect, party, or clique, he had named the best men of his town-his political opponents as well as his friends-and had added to them the pastors of all the principal churches, Catholic and Protestant.

The breadth of mind revealed by this provision, even more than the munificence of his purpose, drew me to him. We met several times, discussed his bill, and finally I reported it substantially as introduced, and supported it until it became a law.1

The acquaintance thus begun ripened into a close and confidential friendship extending over a period of ten years, or until Mr. Cornell's death. During most of that time these two men-the unlettered man of affairs and the cultured scholar-wrought side by side in the founding and upbuilding of New York's great university.

B. A YEAR OF PREPARATION.

1. LEGISLATURE OF 1864.

Even as early as 1864 it was seen that the People's College would probably never be able to claim the benefits of the land grant. Renewed efforts began, therefore, to be made to secure the whole or a part of the endowment for other institutions. A bill to repeal the grant to the People's College was introduced into the senate, but failed to pass. A bill to amend the act granting the lands to the People's College so as to divert a portion to the Agricultural College also failed. This latter measure was introduced by Mr. Cornell, and was referred to the committee on literature and the committee on agriculture jointly. The bill appears never to have got beyond the committee. It was then developed that Mr. White, who was chairman of the committee on literature, was earnestly opposed to any division of the fund, and he probably succeeded in keeping the bill out of the senate. He united with Mr. Cornell, however, in reporting favorably the bill to repeal the grant to the People's College, but the repealing clause was struck out in the committee of the whole. A similar bili also failed in the assembly. The legislature adjourned without taking any further action on the grant, and the People's College was given another respite.2

2. MR. CORNELL'S FIRST PROPOSAL.

During the succeeding summer Mr. Cornell made the first of the proposals which finally took form in the founding of an entirely new institution. Hoping to overcome the opposition of Mr. White and to secure his support at the ensuing session of the legislature, Mr. Cornell invited his young colleague to a meeting of the trustees of the

1Andrew D. White. "My Reminiscences of Ezra Cornell: An address delivered before the Cornell University on Founders' Day, January 11, 1890," pp. 3 and 4.

Senate journal, 1864, pp. 30, 39, 41, 42, 56, 57, 261, 361, 643, 873; assembly journal, 1864, pp. 648, 681, 1145.

State Agricultural College held at Rochester. At this meeting Mr. Cornell proposed to draw a new bill bestowing upon the State Agricultural College an income of $30,000 from the land-grant fund whenever the college should have secured an independent endowment of $300,000, which sum he pledged himself to give. This, he calculated, would be equivalent to keeping the whole fund together and would remove all objections to the proposed division.

To the general surprise, however, Mr. White still opposed any division of the fund. It is probable that he saw in Mr. Cornell's generous offer the opportunity of augmenting the fund instead of decreasing it, and color is lent to this supposition by the fact that he then proposed that Mr. Cornell should ask for the entire fund, pledging at the same time the $300,000. If this were done, he signified his willingness to support the bill vigorously in his committee and in the senate. The meeting seems to have adjourned without any agreement being reached, but the germ idea of Cornell University was beginning to take definite form in the brain of the founder.1

C. THE STRUGGLE IN THE LEGISLATURE OF 1865.

1. MR. CORNELL'S FINAL PROPOSAL.

The legislature of 1865 settled finally and for all time the vexed question of the land grant.

Mr. Cornell had prepared a masterful solution of the difficulty. Convinced of the inexpediency of dividing the fund, he simply proposed that if the State would turn the endowment over to an entirely new institution he would add to the endowment the sum of $500,000 out of his own means.

This conclusion was reached after consultation with trusted friends, and especially with Mr. White, who, in his reminiscences of Mr. Cornell, has related the story of the founder's munificent proposal. Nor had Mr. Cornell yielded his interest in the Agricultural College without careful consideration, nor without consultation with the friends of that institution. As early as January 12, 1865, the board of trustees of the Agricultual College had invited the friends of the People's College to meet in a conference to take into consideration Mr. Cornell's offer. On January 24 a number of gentlemen interested in those two institutions met with Mr. Cornell and Mr. White at Albany, and after a discussion of the questions involved unanimously resolved that the courses of the Agricultural and People's colleges should be united in a single institution, "located at such place in the central part of this State as shall, at an early day, present the greatest pecuniary inducements," and that this institution ought to be the recipient of the landgrant fund.

66

1White: Rem. of Ezra Cornell, p. 5; A. B. Cornell, Biog. of Ezra Cornell, p. 194, where we read: 'The defeat of the proposition to divide and disperse the landgrant income was due more to his [Senator White's] arguments and influence than to any other cause."

Mr. Greeley, long a trustee of the People's College, wrote:

I had hoped that the People's College at Havana would grow into what is required, but that hope seems unlikely to be realized, while Senator Cornell's noble proffer appears to give promise of a glorious realization. I have, therefore, decided to give whatever help I may to this undertaking, and I hope the land grant for our State will be transferred without division and diminution to the Ithaca College. 1

1

Other trustees of the People's College-notably Erastus Brooks, Daniel S. Dickinson, and Edwin B. Morgan-also transferred their allegiance to Mr. Cornell's proposed university.

Thus fortified by friends of both the institutions which had the strongest claims on the fund, Mr. Cornell decided to push his measure for the establishment of a new university.

4

2. PASSAGE OF THE CHARTER.

On February 3 Mr. White gave notice that he would introduce in the senate a bill to establish the Cornell University and to appropriate to it the income of the sale of lands granted to the State by the General Government.2 On the next day he introduced a resolution requesting the board of regents to inquire into the condition of the People's College and state whether it was likely to be able to avail itself of the land-grant fund. On the 7th he introduced the bill incorporating Cornell University and appropriating to it the endowment from the land grant. The bill was referred to the committees on literature and agriculture jointly. On the 15th the regents made their report on the condition of the People's College, showing that it had fallen far short of complying with the conditions of the act under which it might claim the benefits of the land grant.5 On the 25th the bill was reported favorably by the joint committee and was laid on the table, where it remained until the 28th, when it was taken up and recommitted to the joint committee." It was reported back on March 9 and considered in committee of the whole on that and the succeeding day, and was amended so as to permit the People's College to deposit with the State treasurer within three months, in lieu of the conditions imposed upon it, such a sum as, in the opinion of the regents, would enable it to fulfill those conditions at some future time, and in case such deposit was made the grant to Cornell University was to be void.

Thus amended it was again recommitted to the joint committee for final completion. It seems to have been put, however, into the hands

7

'Letter to Mr. White, Feb. 20, 1865. Pamphlet headed The Cornell University, N. D. [1865].

[blocks in formation]
« 上一頁繼續 »