網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版
[ocr errors]

be realized out of these lands? The answer is plain. It belongs and will go to the Cornell family. Already Mr. Cornell has been to the legislature to secure the passage of an act incorporating a great land company of which he is chief. To this company he will sell these lands, fixing his own price, and his company will make from twenty-five to thirty millions of dollars. It can be easily seen how a man with little or no money invested, with such an enormous land fund put into his hands to manage as he sees fit, can afford to divert public attention from his real object by turning it toward a great institution of learning which he is founding. Having passed his bill and secured the fruits of the job, it required vigilant watching to keep the booty secure. Some future legislature might scrutinize this transaction. The people might find out how they had been plundered and attempt a recapture of some part of the stolen property. All this would be unpleasant to Mr. Cornell, so he hits on the idea of perpetuating the job by putting it in the new constitution. He labored long and patiently for this. At length, by giving the chairman of the committee "on education and funds relating thereto" in the convention, Mr. George William Curtis, an ornamental professorship in the university, and Prof. Theodore W. Dwight, also a member of the convention, another ornamental professorship in his university, both of which are supposed to bear substantial salaries, with a trusteeship thrown to Horace Greeley, powerful advocates were secured, and the thing was put into the constitution.1

This remarkable article, after its base charge against Mr. Cornell and its insane insinuations against Mr. Curtis, Mr. Dwight, and Mr. Greeley, closes with a warning to the people to reject the constitution and to refuse to elect Mr. Greeley to the comptrollership, an office for which he was a candidate.

To this tirade Mr. Cornell replied in a letter remarkable for its simple and quiet dignity. He explained fully his dealings with the land scrip, his efforts to sell the land, and his hopes as to the final outcome of his undertaking. His only reference to the personal abuse contained in the article is in the concluding paragraph of his letter, where he says:

99.66

As to the other charge of "swindling, corruption," etc., etc., permit me to say that I have lived in this State from my birth-more than sixty years. I have had personal relations with great numbers of my fellow-citizens, and official relations with all of them. To their judgment on you and me I leave your epithets of "swindler" and "corruptionist."

This scurrilous attack was not destined to be the last. On the 12th of May, 1873, a bill was introduced into the assembly providing for a settlement between Mr. Cornell and the State. The fact was that Mr. Cornell's health had broken under his heavy burdens, and he was now desirous of closing his accounts with the State and transferring the lands to the trustees of the university. It was with this ultimate end in view that the bill was introduced. Its introduction, however, was the signal for an unexpected and bitter attack from the representative of the district in which the People's College was situated. He rose, upon the introduction of this bill, and, in a speech which lasted more than an hour, denounced the whole proceeding, from first to last, as iniquitous and corrupt, and charged that Mr. Cornell had

' Rochester Daily Union and Advertiser, October 26, 1869.

abused his position in order to speculate with the lands for private gains; that he had presented no accounts to the State, and that the act of Congress donating the lands had been violated by the university. This speech was fully reported in the New York papers, and was, of course, widely circulated throughout the State.1

When the daily papers brought the account of this attack to Mr. Cornell's notice, he at once wrote and telegraphed to Governor Dix asking for an immediate investigation by a commission of citizens to be appointed by the governor. On the 15th of May Mr. Alonzo B. Cornell, the eldest son of Ezra Cornell, and at that time speaker of the assembly, asked unanimous consent to introduce a resolution for the appointment of an investigating committee with Horatio Seymour at its head. Only one objection was heard, that of the member who had made the charges, but this, under the rules, was sufficient to defeat the resolution. The fact was that this member had drawn and had introduced into the senate a resolution for the appointment of an investigating commission, and had named as commissioners certain public officials alleged to be inimical to Mr. Cornell. The senate resolution was so amended as to leave the appointment of the commissioners in the discretion of the governor. It was further amended in the assembly so as to devolve on the commissioners the duty of investigating the general condition of the university, and especially as to the department of agriculture and mechanic arts."

3

The attack on Mr. Cornell made a profound sensation throughout the State. The New York Times said, editorially:

If, as Mr. McGuire charges, a great speculation has been concealed under the pretense of beneficence, Mr. Cornell will lose the high character he has hitherto borne: if Mr. McGuire can not sustain his charges with conclusive evidence, he sinks into public contempt as a cominon slanderer.2

After the accuser had objected to the resolution in the assembly for the appointment of a commission, the same paper said: "Mr. McGuire has already proved himself unworthy of public credence." President White on May 16, three days after the attack, called together the students of the university and in a singularly able address laid before them and the public generally a full history of Mr. Cornell's relation to the land grant. In general the charges seemed to have been received with incredulity, although they were repeated both in the assembly and in the senate.

5

The committee appointed by the governor consisted of Horatio Seymour, William A. Wheeler, and John D. Van Buren-names too well

'See New York Times, May 13, 1873.

Ibid., May 15, 1873.

3Ibid., May 16, 1873; May 21, 1873.

'Senate journal, 1873, pp. 982, 1021, 1059, 1060; assembly journal, 1873, pp. 1857,

'The address appears in full in the New York Times for May 23, 1873.

known in American history, especially the first two, to need comment. Mr. Seymour and Mr. Van Buren were lifelong political opponents of Mr. Cornell and could have no reason for fear or favor in their investigation.

After a most exhaustive and searching examination, during which the member of the assembly who had made the charges had every opportunity to prove them, the committee made its report on April 16, 1874. Two reports were made, which differ only in the view they hold as to the relation of the State to the Cornell endowment fund, Mr. Seymour contending that the State should be relieved of all the care and responsibility connected with that fund, and from any, even indirect, interest in lands situated within another State. Upon the points involving the charges against Mr. Cornell there was but one opinion. Mr. Seymour declares that

It is due to Mr. Cornell to state that none of the witnesses or parties who appeared before the committee complained that he had sought to gain any pecuniary advantage to himself or to his family in the management of the property under his control. On the contrary, those who object most strenuously to the propriety of his management, the character of his contracts, and the objects aimed at by the legislation he sought or obtained disclaim any purpose to charge that he has enriched himself.1

There is not a word in either report which reflects in the slightest degree upon the character or conduct of Mr. Cornell, while the recommendations contained in them were mainly in line with the purposes which he was desirous of accomplishing.

This was the last violent attack upon the founder, but up to the very year of his death the paper already quoted continued periodically to assail him with epithets of "land jobber" and "land grabber." "But," says Mr. White, "he took these foul attacks by tricky declaimers and his vindication by three of the most eminent fellowcitizens with the same serenity. That there was in him a profound contempt for the wretched creatures who assailed him and imputed to him motives as vile as their own, can hardly be doubted; yet, though I was with him constantly during this period, I never heard him speak harshly of them, nor could I ever see that this injustice diminished his good will toward his fellow-men and his desire to benefit them."2

7. TRANSFER OF THE LANDS TO THE UNIVERSITY.

In October, 1874, the commissioners of the land office approved the proposed transfer of the lands from Mr. Cornell to the university. This was soon after accomplished, and when the founder breathed his last, on December 9, 1874, he passed away in the full assurance that the great work he had undertaken, and had borne alone for nearly ten years, was accomplished.

1

Minority report, senate docs., 1874, No. 93, p. 8. See also majority report, senate docs., 1874, No. 92.

[blocks in formation]

But was it? He transferred with the lands the cost of their purchase, location, and care, a sum in excess of $576,000. Each year they were held added $50,000, $60,000, and in one year over $90,000 to the outlay. For seven years the university bore the burden of this vast, unproductive, expensive endowment. It borrowed from its endowment fund to carry its land endowment. The income could not pay the running expenses of the university and the cost of caring for the land and paying taxes upon them. Nearly $400,000 had been taken from the productive funds to carry the university and its lands down to 1881. It seemed as if the founder's gigantic undertaking might result in the final ruin of his university.

Fortunately for the university and for the outcome of Mr. Cornell's great plan, the chairman of the board of trustees, Henry W. Sage, had a faith equal to that of the founder and a knowledge and experience in timber lands providentially fitting him to carry on the founder's work. For seven years he waited, often in the face of bankruptcy itself, for the outcome he believed to be assured. Once he set himself against the wishes of his colleagues and persuaded them to allow an option that would have brought in a million and a quarter of dollars to lapse. He believed that more would be realized for the 275,000 acres covered by the option. His belief was justified. Pine timber, which had been selling for not more than $1 a thousand on the stump in 1880, rose rapidly in the next year. In 1881 and 1882 the university sold about 140,000 acres for over $2,300,000. The productive funds of the university were trebled by this transaction and from this time on the financial skies grew steadily clearer.

Great as have been Mr. Sage's benefactions to the university-and he gave it outright $1,175,000-his services in the handling of the great land endowment are of equal or even greater value and entitle him to the lasting gratitude of the friends of higher education.1

In 1881 the legislature transferred the custody and care of the Cornell endowment fund to the university trustees, thus accomplishing fully Mr. Cornell's purpose of making this fund a general endowment for all the needs of the institution.

8. RESULTS OF MR. CORNELL'S UNDERTAKING.

When Messrs. Seymour, Wheeler, and Van Buren made their report upon the management of the land grant in 1874, they all agreed that if the total outcome of Mr. Cornell's management was an endowment of $1,000,000 their expectations would be more than realized. Just three days before the twenty years fixed by Mr. Cornell's contract with the State the value of the lands then sold amounted to over

'Mr. Sage died September 18, 1897, after having served the university over twenty-seven years as trustee, during twenty-two of which he was chairman of the board.

3176-23

three and three-quarter millions of dollars. Mr. Cornell had himself estimated the total outcome of his undertaking at only two and onehalf millions.1

By a report of the land committee of the university trustees, dated October 6, 1893,2 it appears that the total amount realized from the sales of lands to August 1 of that year was $5,566,949.81, while the cost of locating and maintaining the lands was $1,370,331.95, leaving a total profit of $4,196,617.86. There was then unsold 157,449.44 acres, estimated at $722,534.66. The grand total of Mr. Cornell's giant undertaking was therefore $6,289,484.47, netting about $5,000,000. To this must be added the land scrip fund which would bring the total up to $5,700,000.

No other State can show so good a result. New York, through Mr. Cornell's management, obtained an average of $6.73 an acre. Kansas, with 90,000 acres, obtained $5.57 an acre; California, with 150,000 acres, obtained $5.14 an acre; Minnesota, with 120,000 acres, obtained $4.39 an acre; Iowa, with 240,000 acres, obtained $2.70 an acre; Michigan, with 240,000 acres, obtained $2.50 an acre; no other State reached an average of $1.75 an acre, while thirteen States obtained not to exceed an average of 60 cents an acre. The total product of the grant, exclusive of New York's share, amounted to $9,204,897.51, or less than one and one-half times the total realized in New York alone.3 This achievement of Mr. Cornell is perhaps as great a piece of financiering as was ever undertaken and consummated for purely philanthropic purposes, and fully justifies the remark of his colleague, President White, that

Like the great prince of navigators in the fifteenth century, he might be described as a man " who had the taste for great things”—“ qui tenia gusto en cosas grandes." He felt that the university was to be great, and he took his measures accordingly.

B. THE LAND SCRIP FUND.

The land scrip fund, consisting of the amounts received by the State for sale of scrip prior to the contract with Mr. Cornell and the amounts paid into the fund by Mr. Cornell under his contract, in all $473,420.87, remained, after the transfer of Mr. Cornell's contract to the university in 1874, and the transfer of the Cornell endowment fund to the university in 1880, in the hands of the State. As early as 1876 a difference of opinion arose between the comptroller and the

'Letter to Comptroller, dated June 9, 1866.

2 Proceedings of board of trustees, 1890, p. 286. The report of the treasurer for 1898 shows $4,513,289.20 in the Cornell endowment fund, 155,194 acres of land unsold, estimated at $600,000, and $688,576.12 in the land scrip fund, making a grand total of $5,801,865.32. The estimate of 1893 is therefore more than confirmed by the results in 1898.

History of the agricultural college land grant, by S. D. Halliday, Ithaca, 1890, pp. xvi-xviii. These figures are in some cases estimated, but in all cases upon date furnished by the proper State authority to Mr. Halliday.

« 上一頁繼續 »