Iowa State University

“ Education.—The school population of the State is about 680,000, with an average daily attendance of about 400,000. There were about 30,000 teachers with an average monthly salary for male teachers of about $90.00 and for female teachers of $80.00, Among the colleges are the State University of Iowa, at Iowa City, Cornell College, at Mount Vernon, Drake University, at Des Moines, Iowa College, at Grinnell, Luther College, at Decorah, and the Iowa Wesleyan University, at Mount Pleasant. ”

“ He acquired his education at the Iowa City Academy and the State University of Iowa, and was fellow in the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, in 1893-95. In the latter year he became instructor in the University of Iowa, assistant professor in 1896 and Professor of Political Science in 1897. ”

“ After tracing thus briefly the growth of the public school system in Iowa, we turn with interest to the institutions for higher education, the State University, State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts and the State Normal School. In addition to these there are a number of denominational colleges, each occupying a field peculiarly its own. Foremost among these stands Iowa College at Grinnell, a worthy representative of the Congregational Church and a college which has given to Iowa high rank in the educational world. ”

“ Iowa might well go much farther and require that each woman who graduates from her university shall be prepared by suitable studies for the position of homemaker which sooner or later she may assume. Iowa is a progressive state in many respects. She is the first to put her educational institutions under a coordinating board. This board has within its power to take a distinct step in advance by enabling the university to offer studies which are especially suited for developing educated women as homemakers and as guardians of efficient social personality. ”

“ One of the State Board of Examiners, is Ella A. Hamilton of Des Moines. The ‘Northwestern Educational Journal’ is edited by a woman. The school of Domestic Economy at the State Agricultural College, is in charge of Mary B. Welch as dean. A number of young ladies, graduates of the State University and other literary schools, have gone to this School of Domestic Economy to finish their education.”
Many of the most talented editorial writers for Iowa journals have for many years been women; and among Iowa authors of books on various subjects are many brilliant women. ”

“ Iowa is indeed a remarkable state and her people a peculiar people. We have but few drones in the hive. Our population is made up of simply the young and the strong and the enterprising of the other states that have come hither to build up their personal fortunes, and who have at the same time laid well and strong the foundations of a great state. There is scarcely a college or university of any of the older states that is not well represented in our men and women. We have come together here and what one did not know he has learned from his next door neighbor. ”

“ The first ten years of the institution were marked by a singularly rapid growth, considering the fact that they included the darkest days of the Civil war, when nearly every male student was drawn from the college halls to the service of his country. At the end of the decade the faculty numbered eight professors and instructors, and 375 students were enrolled, fifty-one of whom were in college classes, the largest enrollment of collegiate students in the state, unless at the State University. ”

“ He was reared on a farm, acquired a good education and taught school. He graduated at the Alfred, New York, University and studied law, coming to Iowa in April, 1854, locating at Marion in Linn County where he began the practice of his profession. In February, 1856, he was a delegate to the State Convention which met at Iowa City and organized the Republican party of Iowa. In August, 1862, he raised a military company for the Twentieth Iowa Volunteer Infantry, of which he was chosen captain, serving under General Francis J. Herron. ”

“ The work of the university is organized in a college of liberal arts, colleges of law, medicine, homœopathic medicine, dentistry and pharmacy, a graduate department, the Iowa School of Political and Social Science, and two hospitals. The college of liberal arts confers the degrees of B.A., B.Ph., and B.S. The graduate college confers the degrees of M.A., M.S., Ph.D., civil engineer, and electrical engineer. The college of liberal arts maintains a summer session for teachers and a summer school for library training. ”

“ An educational institution for both sexes in Iowa City, Iowa, organized with an endowment by Congress of two townships of land, to which has been added a permanent annual State appropriation of $125,000, and a tax of one-fifth of a mill for building purposes, making a total annual income of over $402,000, including tuition fees. ”

“ Fellows the elementary normal department was formed and became the chair of didactics and united with that of mental and moral science. For six years this was the only chair of didactics in any American college or university. Dr. Fellow was president of the State Teachers' Association in 1869 and 1872. He has had great influence in State temperance work, his open letters on the subject attracting wide attention. He was at one time president of the State Temperance Alliance. In 1871 he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Cornell College. ”

“ The capital and largest city of Iowa, it is an important manufacturing and commercial city, and noted especially for its extensive insurance interests and exceptional railroad facilities. It has many important buildings, among them the Capitol, built at a cost of three million dollars, the United States Government Building, the State Arsenal, a State Historical Building, completed in 1908 at a cost of five hundred thousand dollars, Drake University, Highland Park College, Des Moines College, and a state library. ”

“ The State Historical Society has removed its valuable collection to one of the buildings of the University. In recent years more liberal appropriations have been made by the Legislature enabling the Society to enlarge its scope of usefulness, and issue in place of the Record the Iowa Journal of History and Politics, a quarterly publication of the highest class, ably conducted by Dr. ”

“ Students who come to college merely to have a good time or because they have nothing else to do, and those who come without any deep seated desire for knowledge for its own sake should be denied the right to enter it. (404)
6. The University of Iowa is located part on one side of the Iowa River and part on the other. Many students, when the weather is good, paddle canoes upon it. ”

“ He attended the common schools several years and in 1863 came to Iowa, making his home at Cedar Rapids. He entered the Iowa State College where he graduated as a civil engineer in 1872. Soon after he entered upon the study of law and began to practice in 1874, locating in Boone. ”

“ A History of Higher Education in Iowa has been prepared by Prof. Leonard F. Parker, of Iowa College, as Circular of Information No. 1 7 of the United States Bureau of Education. There is much in the educational history of Iowa, as Commissioner Harris well says, which is instructive to all students and observers of educational progress, since within the limits of that State a noteworthy zeal has prevailed from the time of the earliest settlements in founding institutions of learning and in providing instruction for all classes of people. ”

“ His early education was acquired in the common schools and later he graduated from the State Normal School at Albany. In 1853 he came to Muscatine, Iowa, where he was chosen principal of one of the city schools. ”

“ Welch to the long term in the Senate but he declined the position, preferring the presidency of the Iowa College. There for fifteen years, he labored most successfully, to build up that institution into one of the most successful scientific and industrial colleges in the west. He possessed a remarkable power of organization and was largely instrumental in working out the many difficult problems of the new system of education then in its infancy. ”

“ He continues:
“The statistics of the penitentiaries and almhouses throughout the country abundantly show that education is the best preventive of pauperism and crime. Education, too, is the great equalizer of human conditions. Every consideration of duty and policy compels us to sustain the common schools of the State in the highest possible efficiency.”
The first Superintendent of Public Instruction after Iowa became a State, James Harlan, was succeeded by Thomas H. Benton who laid the foundation for our magnificent school system. ”

“ He called attention to the fact that “the Historical Department for which the State is providing a home, will be an important auxiliary to the development of the higher education of our future citizens.” He further says:
“We have a right to expect in the development of Iowa a truthful, sensible and incorruptible journalism and a literature which gives more strength to the mind than agitation to the nerves. ”

“ Children between the ages of five and eighteen years of age, residents of the State, who, deficient in intellect, are unable to acquire an education m the regular schools, are entitled to receive training free in this institution.
REFORM AND INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS
In 1868 the Twelfth General Assembly passed an act for the establishment of the Iowa Reform School. The trustees leased a building at Salem, in Henry County, where a school was opened for the reception of pupils. The Fourteenth General Assembly made an appropriation for suitable buildings which were located at Eldora. ”

“ Young women were admitted as students on an equality with young men. On the 17th of March, 1869, the college was formally opened. More than 1,000 persons assembled from all parts of the State to witness the inauguration of the people’s college from which so much benefit was expected. ”

“ IN the State in which the per cent. of illiteracy is so small as in Iowa inquiry is naturally made as to the causes of this comparatively high grade of intelligence being found so far from the acknowledgedcenters of culture. One reason may be found in the fact that the pioneers of this section were largely from the New England and Middle States where the standard of intelligence has always been of a high order. These men and women being largely dependent upon their own resources, often engaged in school teaching as the means to the study of a profession. ”

“ In 1843 he was again elected a member of the House. In 1852 he was elected to the House of the Fourth General Assembly and was the recognized leader of the Whig minority. He took an active interest in the improvement of the school system, the encouragement of railroad building, the promotion of temperance and opposition to the extension of slavery. In 1853 he helped to establish the first agricultural journal in the State and was one of its editors. It was named The Iowa Farmer and Horticulturist and was published monthly at Burlington by Morgan McKenny. ”

“ He grew to manhood in Oakland, Michigan, where his father settled on a farm. Acquiring sufficient education by the time he was nineteen to teach school, with his earnings he pursued studies in the higher institutions of learning. He removed to Iowa in 1876 where he became principal of a public school in Fayette County. ”

“ Few men in Iowa had a wider acquaintance with the notable people of his native State and no one warmer or more abiding friendships. It was one of the greatest pleasures of his busy life to serve his friends. ”

“ Education. According to the census of 1900, no State has a lower per cent. of illiterates than Iowa, the figure being only 2.3 per cent. of the population over ten years of age, as compared with 10.7 for the whole country. This showing is noteworthy in view of the fact that there is no compulsory school-attendance law. In 1899 76.2 of the population between five and twenty-one years were enrolled in public schools, of whom 65.6 attended ‘regularly.’ The average length of the school term in 1900 was 158 days, which was lower than it had been before for more than a decade. ”

“ In 1862 he was chosen president of Iowa College, although he did not leave his church at Lyons until 1865. He remained president for twenty years, retiring in 1884, though he continued to teach mental and moral philosophy. ”

“ Iowa is a thinly populated, somewhat newly settled State, almost in the centre of the Union, with about [Pg 54] 2,000,000 inhabitants, of whom one-sixth are foreigners, chiefly Germans. It must be remembered, in attempting to form any true estimate of the causes of the failure of the law, that Iowa suffers from the usual weaknesses of youth, whether youth of nations or of individuals,—venturesomeness and fickleness. Its people are excitable, inclined to experimentalise, and apt to rush to extremes. ”

“ In the public schools he acquired sufficient education to teach, thus earning his tuition at an academy and a course of law lectures. In 1801 he came to Iowa, taking up his residence at Lyons, where he began to practice law. ”

“ Upon leaving the academy in 1878 the young man spent a year on his father's farm. In 1880 he was made teacher of natural science, a position which he held for three years. During this time he became especially interested in geology which led him to spend a year in Colorado, partly at Colorado College and partly in field work. In 1884 he entered the Iowa Agricultural College, and before completing his contemplated course preparatory to teaching, he became especially interested in glacial geology. ”

“ His education was acquired in the public schools of his native town and in the New London Literary and Scientific Institution. He worked on a farm and taught school until his parents removed to Iowa in 1860, when he began to read law. ”