The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1865-02-09
The Agricultural Oollere.

The following able letter, addressed to Presl-
dent WOODS, Of Bowdoin College, will be read
with interest and profit by all who have the
best good of the Agricultural College at heart.
The writer, Hon. CHARLES L. FLINT, is Sec
rotary of the Mass. Board of Agriculture.
was sent to Europe to investigate the ques-
ton of Agricultural Schools in that country.
and has written one of the best books upon
the subject, confessedly, ever issued from the
American press. This much by way of intro
ducing the following:
Boston, Jan. IS, 1855.
Rev. LEONARD WOODS, d. d, Pres. of
Boscdoin College:
DEAR SIR:-In reply to your questions as
to the location, plan of organization, &C., of
an Agricultural College, / would state that
my views are given at considerable length in
the extract from my last Annual Report, upon
the Agricultural Schools of Europe, copy of
which placed in your hands
Much popular misconception has prevailed
in this State in regard to what we please to
term an Agricultural College. To carry out
the ideas of many, otherwise very sensible
men, we should make Manual Labor School.
and teach boys, or rather young men, of sew.
enteen, eigeteen or twenty years of age, to
hold pillow, and rake hay, as If they could not
learn the same things better on the farm at
home. We shall never get upon the right
track until we take broader views of the objects
and aims of an institution designed to teach
agriculture, and the sciences connected with
it.
The Plan for school in Maine, which you
submitted TO me, appears to be comprehensive
and complete. In thinking 1t over after ex-
aiming it with care, do not know that1
could make any important suggestions other
than those made to you when Won were in
my Office.
10 establish an isolated independent Agri-
cultural College, that is, College removed
from any other educational institution and
away from any great centre of population,
would require vastly larger sum than most
people at first imagine. L do not think that
anything less than half million acres of the
national land script wonld justify the attempt
with reasonable prospect of success, that Is
unless there were other and surely reliable
sources of income to be depended upon in adj
dillon; and if it were attempted with any,
thing less than that, the institution would lin
ger along with sickly existence or take rank
scarcely above respectable high school.
why, look at it a moment. We, in this
state, Tor Instance, have but $4,000 acres of
iand scrip, after deducting one-tenth for the
purchase of farm, and three-tenths applied
70 Inc Institute of Technology for provision for
instruction in the Mechanic Arts-to form a
permanent fund or working capital of an Az
rlcultural College. None Of this scrip has
sold, as yet, for over eighty-five cents per
acre, and the average, after all is sold. will
not probably exceed eighty cents. Even this ia
above the market price. This, you see, will
give us, say about $4,000, or not over s175.-
ooo. The income to be derived from that
iund could not, under ordinary circumstances.
exceed ten thousand dollars at the outside,
and doubt If we could calculate upon its
yielding over So 900, net.
NO" many common high school in this
state, costs over ten thousand dollars year.
But here, in an isolated Agricultural College.
you must have large and talented corns of
professors, scientific men, with ,abora,or;as
philosophical apparatus, cabinets Of modols
soils, minerals, grains, grasses, &c.. with ho.
tanlc garden, extensive experimental grounds
and all the paraphernalia of large establish.
ment. You see at glance the utter absurdi-
ty of the thing. The income of our fund
would hardly support four professors, to say
nothing OF any other officers, employees and
expenses.
Here is an argument for concentration of
forces, if there were no other, and it seems to
me to-be of so much power that am surpris-
ed that every sensible man cannot see It and
yieic 10 II as case Of necessity 1t is the
only alternative in case of small fund like
ours IN Massachusetts, and yours in Maine.
1t Is absolutely the only course that car, prom