History of the Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Science

              HISTORY OF
KANSAS STATE COLLEGE
OF AGRICULTURE AND
APPLIED SCIENCE
JUSTIN S. MORRILL
Author of the Morrill Act approved J u l y 2, 1862, which provided grants of land
for the endowment of colleges to be organized for the education of the industrial
classes. He also sponsored a Second Morrill Act, approved August 30, 1890, which
authorized annual appropriations of $25,000 to each of the land-grant colleges and
universities.
HISTORY
OF THE
KANSAS STATE COLLEGE
OF AGRICULTURE AND
APPLIED SCIENCE
By
JULIUS TERRASS WILLARD, Sc. D.
Kansas State College Historian
KANSAS STATE COLLEGE PRESS
MANHATTAN, KANSAS
1940
To members of Governing Boards who have held their appoint-ments
as civic trusts, and as mandates to promote education in
the State of Kansas;
To members of the Faculty, who by conscious design, or by un-conscious
result, through intelligence, scholarship, industry, and
integrity, have created the standards of instruction and research;
To the Students and Graduates, whose earnestness of purpose, sci-entific
and practical attainments, occupational success, and private
and public service have created good will in the State; and
To all whose lofty ideals, breadth of vision, faith in the future,
firmness of purpose, and tenacity in performance have made
KANSAS STATE COLLEGE,
This volume is humbly, gratefully, and sincerely
DEDICATED.
THE AUTHOR
DOCTOR Julius Terrass Willard, the author of this history, has
been connected with Kansas State College throughout the life
of the institution except for the first sixteen years. He was born
April 9, 1862, about ten months before the College was founded.
His birth place is only fifteen miles from the campus. The author
and the College literally have grown up together. He entered the
College as a student in 1879 and was graduated bachelor of science
in 1883. Following his experience as an undergraduate he has been
connected officially with the College for fifty-six years.
His experience in the College has included the status of under-graduate,
graduate student, assistant, assistant professor, associate
professor, professor, director of the Agricultural Experiment Sta-tion,
dean, vice-president, acting president and historian. In each
of the various positions he has discharged his duties with marked
distinction. For almost six decades he has stood loyally by the
College in prosperity and in adversity. Because of his long service,
his wisdom, his integrity and his devotion to high standards of
scientific research and of scholarship, the value of his contributions
to the College and through it to the State and the Nation is incal-culable.
No other person has known the College intimately so long as
has Doctor Willard. With his extraordinary knowledge of the
institution he combines a strong historical instinct, high literary
ability and a veritable passion for accuracy. No other person could
possibly be so well qualified to write a history of the oldest state
college in Kansas, to which he has devoted a long and useful life.
F . D. FARRELL, President.
January, 1940.
PREFACE
IN choosing material for inclusion in this volume the author has
been impressed by the enormous mass of that which has been
omitted, and recognizes that he may meet criticism in respect to
selections made. As the attempt has been to sketch the develop-ment
of the College, much interesting matter not related to that
process has been crowded out.
Writing from within the group, with accompanying prejudices,
with inequalities in personal knowledge of the departments of the
College, and with incomplete acquaintance with the constantly
increasing personnel, the author has necessarily not completely at-tained
the high standards of objectivity, fairness to individuals, and
adequacy of presentation of institutional progress that have been
his aim.
Great care has been used to exclude errors as to dates, and to
attain factual accuracy in respect to historical incidents. A few
statements in the book are at variance with some previously pub-lished.
The courtesy of careful reference to records in such cases
is solicited.
It has seemed unwise to include source reference data in respect
to the thousands of individual items of the history. A large part
of the recent work of the author has consisted in the preparation
of index cards by means of which any interested person may con-veniently
find references to the records upon which most of the
statements are based.
In assembling the data necessary the author has searched: (1)
compilations of Federal laws affecting the land-grant colleges; (2)
all the session laws of the State of Kansas; (3) all the minutes of
the Boards of Regents, or of Administration, insofar as the latter
touch Kansas State College; (4) all the minutes of the general fac-ulty
of the College; (5) all the minutes extant of the Council of
Deans; (6) all the annual reports and biennial reports of the Col-lege;
(7) all the College catalogues; (8) a complete file of the
Industrialist; (9) publications of the Agricultural Experiment Sta-tion
and the Engineering Experiment Station; (10) a complete file
of Royal Purple and its fore-runners; (11) the Students' Herald
and Kansas State Collegian; (12) the annual and the biennial re-ports
of the State Board of Agriculture; (13) many volumes of
the newspapers of Manhattan, Junction City, and Topeka; (14)
"History of Kansas State Agricultural College," by Professor J . D.
Walters; "Kansas," edited by Professor F. W. Blackmar; "Kansas
and Kansans," by W. E. Connelley; and (15) many other publi-cations.
Miss Harriet A. Parkerson most courteously gave the
author access to the minutes of the Manhattan Town Company, the
records of the trustees of Bluemont Central College, and to certain
interesting personal manuscripts; and for these favors he records
here his most cordial thanks.
It is impossible to acknowledge, or even to recall, all the gen-erous
acts of assistance given by colleagues in the institution, and
by other individuals. The important service, and unfailing courtesy
of officers of the Library of the Kansas State Historical Society must
not be overlooked.
The author gratefully acknowledges the expert service of Pro-fessor
J. O. Faulkner of the department of English, Kansas State
College, who read nearly the entire book in manuscript, and whose
professional advice has been of the greatest value.
In carrying the volume through the press the advice and service
of Professor E. T. Keith and Professor E. M. Amos, and the tech-nical
skill and professional ability of other members of the printing
staff have contributed greatly to the creation of this product of
the art of printing,
J . T . WiLLARD.
Kansas State College
January, 1940.
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