University of Kansas

“ They have just as much fun in their college life as any other students do, but practically none of them go to college just "to have a good time," or with the even less creditable purpose of improving their social position. Kansas is still too near to first principles to be concerned with superficialities. It goes to college to work and learn, and its reason for wishing to learn are, for the most part, practical. One does not feel, in the University of Kansas, the aspiration for a vague culture for the sake of culture only. ”

“ Kansas is young, and has not yet accumulated vast wealth. But surely such allowances as these do not indicate indifference to the welfare of her Child. It is not yet nineteen years since the first building for the University was completed, and the Institution, at that time, had only four students enrolled. Less than thirteen years ago the present main building was occupied, and 239 students were in attendance. During the year just closed, 521 students were enrolled. The growth of the University, it will thus be seen, has kept pace with that of the State. ”

“ And as Kansas is destined to be the greatest of American States, the University, her Child, will in time rank first among American institutions of learning.
I can fairly and truly say, too, that this Child of the State has a pretty large family of bright, intelligent children-young men and women who proudly hail it as their Alma Mater. One meets them, now, in nearly every section of the State, engaged in almost every honorable calling—the law, journalism, medicine, commerce, education. One of the graduates of the University is, for the first time, a member of its Board of Regents. ”

“ We hit on the University of Kansas because Kansas is the most typical American agricultural state, and also because a Kansan, whom we met on the train, informed us that "In Kansas we are hell on education."
In detail I knew little of these big state schools. I had heard, of course, of the broadening of their activities to include a great variety of general state service, aside from their main purpose of giving some sort of college education, at very low cost, to young men and women of rural communities who desire to continue beyond the public schools. ”

“ The educational institutions within a short distance include the University of Missouri, the University of Kansas, William Jewell College, Park College, and Baker University. There is a comprehensive system of public schools, supplemented by special schools. ”

“ In educational privileges, what State can equal Kansas? Our State University, Agricultural College and Normal School are institutions of which every intelligent Kansan is justly proud, and our common-school system, supplemented by dozens of denominational or private academies and colleges, is wonderful in the scope and extent of the educational facilities provided. We had only 154 school houses and employed only 189 teachers in 1860; we now have more than 7,000 school houses, in which fully 9,000 teachers are employed to instruct 350,000 scholars. ”

“ Education in Kansas began with the mission schools and was one of the first interests in Territorial days. There were many subscription schools before district schools were organized. The organization of districts began in the Territorial period and kept pace with settlement. The University, the Normal School and the Agricultural College were established during the Civil War. Since that time many denominational colleges have been established, the high school has been developed, and many other means of education have been provided. Great educational progress has been made. ”

“ I went on, "Kansas does develop marvellous people ... we have Carrie Nation—"
"And Johnnie Gregory!" put in Baxter.
"I don't want just to belong to Kansas."
It was I who was humourless now, "I'm sick of its corn-fed bourgeois ideals ... I want to belong to the world—as—you do!"
We trudged back to town.
"What a site for a university!... the men who put those buildings up there on the Hill must have dreamed greatly ... look at the sun!... the buildings are transfigured into a fairy city!" ”

“ Since I came to Kansas from the State of New York twenty-five years ago, I have been asked a score of times to examine one candidate or another. I always refused: I did not wish to punish Western candidates by putting them against our Eastern standards. But here at long last appears a candidate who has won honor in the University to whom, therefore, a stiff examination in open court can only be a vindication, and accordingly I examined Mr. Harris as if he had been in the State of New York; for surely Kansas too has come of age and its inhabitants cannot wish to be humored as inferiors. ”

“ Without asking anything new from congress, if Kansas can receive, on coming into the Union, all the usual grants, and use them judiciously, she can not only speedily cover herself with a network of railroads, but, by devoting all the rest to purposes of education, she would soon have a complete system of common schools, with normal schools, free academies, and a great university, in all of which tuition should be free to all our people. ”

“ Ackley, Ernest L., lawyer and regent of the Kansas State University, was born at North Ridgeville, Ohio, Nov. 30, 1863, a son of Chauncey and Jerusa (McNeal) Ackley. About 1875 the family removed to Kansas and settled on a farm in Ottawa county, where Ernest attended the public schools until he was eighteen years of age, when he obtained a position in a bank at Minneapolis. After working in the bank for about two years, he entered the state university, and graduated in the law department with the class of 1890. ”

“ Kansas has determined upon this classification. The Reform School at Topeka, the Reformatory at Hutchinson and the State Penitentiary at Lansing represent this three-fold classification. The reformatory at Hutchinson has not been completed. Its methods are to be patterned after the reformatory at Elmira, N. Y., the model institution of its class in America. The chief difficulty in the establishment of such an institution in Kansas is its great expense. It is a great undertaking for a young state like Kansas to compete with an old wealthy state like New York. ”

“ Seventy-three percent. of last year's students were born in Kansas; more than a third of them came from villages of less than 2,000 population; and the father of one out of every three students was a farmer.
Life at the university is comfortable, simple, and very cheap, the average cost, per capita, for the school year being perhaps $200, including school expenses, board, social expenses, etc., nor are there great social and financial gaps between certain groups of students, as in some eastern colleges. ”

“ That ninety-seven per cent of Kansas people are in industrial vocations, so greater prominence should be given industrial studies. That each year's course of study should be, as far as possible, complete in itself because many students are unable to take a whole college course. Mr. Anderson's views were unpopular but they met the approval of the board of regents to such an extent that they discontinued the department of literature and organized those of mechanic arts and agriculture ”

“ Branch experiment stations have, in later years, been established at Hays, Garden City, Dodge City, Tribune, and Colby, where problems peculiar to the western part of the State are studied. The Agricultural College is doing a great work in gathering information and bringing it to the people by means of bulletins, lectures, correspondence courses, demonstration trains, demonstration agents, and farmers’ institutes. Kansas was one of the first states to hold a Farmers’ Institute in connection with its Agricultural College. ”

“ The history, the growth, the prosperity of this State are all exceptional. Not yet twenty-five years of age, Kansas has outstripped, in population, wealth and all the elements of an advanced civilization, more than half the States of the Union. This State has carried off the first prizes at the International Expositions at Philadelphia and New Orleans. It leads the procession in the reports of the National Agricultural Department. It has built nearly five thousand miles of railway to carry to market the largest crops ever grown on American soil. ”

“ I speak of the future thus confidently, because, after all, the richest heritage of Kansas is the imperial manhood of its citizenship. No State in the Union, no country in the world, can boast of a braver or more intelligent, enterprising, liberty-loving, and law-respecting population. From the date of its organization up to the present time, Kansas has been receiving the best blood and brain of the civilized world. Hither, thirty years ago, came thronging a host of bright and generous men, to protect this fair land against the aggressions of slavery. ”

“ Born in the storm and stress period of national political controversy, cradled in the tumult of civil war, and reared to full statehood in an era unparalleled in the arts of peace, the life of Kansas has been one of intense activity. Carved out of territory once known as part of the Great American Desert, by the industry of her people it has become one of the most productive and wealthy states of the Union in proportion to its population. From the political unrest of the early life has sprung a people alive to progressive forms of government. ”

“ Fields and meadows are rich with herds and flocks. The face of the land has been transformed with forests, orchards and hedge-rows. Everywhere is growth, improvement, increase; everywhere are the evidences of culture, thrift, and enterprise; everywhere the promise of a larger, broader life, and a firmer, deeper faith in the greatness and glory of Kansas. Here is the Central State, the Sunflower State, the Soldier State, and within its borders prosperity and order, intelligence and sobriety, industry and enterprise, go hand in hand. ”

“ Very few, if any, of the meetings held in this room are composed of people who occupy so important a place in the every-day work and growth of the State as do those now assembled here, and none, I am sure, represent a more useful or honorable calling. Teachers of Kansas, I believe you understand these facts. I believe you appreciate, in full measure, the dignity and importance of your vocation, and that you are striving, earnestly and laboriously, to fit yourselves for its great duties and vast responsibilities. ”

“ Looking back over the records of our eventful, often stormy past, and contemplating the prosperous present and hopeful future of Kansas, it has seemed to me that one great duty this State of ours has forgotten. All nations, all States, have delighted to perpetuate, in the names they have given to their cities or counties, the memory of those who, in times of great trouble and danger, testified their devotion to the welfare of the people by a courageous, steadfast, self-sacrificing defense of their rights and liberties. ”

“ The influence of even a dozen such teachers, scattered throughout Kansas, would amply repay the State for all the expenditures it has ever made in behalf of this Institution, and spread far and wide the reputation of the Normal as a deserving and useful training school for educators. ”

“ For us, it means that the quality of Kansas government depends upon the quality of Kansas citizenship. While the task of the pioneers was a heavy one, ours to-day is no less great, though it is different. Their struggle was to get the soil under cultivation, ours to see that it does not become worn out; theirs to get public utilities, ours to use and regulate them; theirs to develop new industries, ours to see that they are carried on with justice to all; theirs to establish schools, ours to make them more efficient; in general, theirs to build up, ours to use wisely. ”

“ What we need is not the respect of our fellow men but the chance to get something for nothing.
Oh, yes, Kansas is a great state. Here are people fleeing from it by the score every day, capital going out of the state by the hundreds of dollars; and every industry but farming paralyzed, and that crippled, because its products have to go across the ocean before they can find a laboring man at work; who can afford to buy them. Let's don't stop this year. Let's drive all the decent self-respecting men out of the state. ”

“ Other pioneers have had the great task of making a state out of a wilderness, but Kansas pioneers had a second great task, that of making a free state in the face of the most determined opposition. They came to Kansas as the Puritans came to America, in the name of liberty. They were stern, unyielding, purposeful men and women, sure of the presence of divine leadership, and their character 220 has deeply influenced the Kansas people. This influence has made them hate oppression; it has made them demand justice and fair play; it has made them value people for their personal worth ”

“ Some of these institutions receive and care for indigent persons without charge. Others make a charge for all who enter.
Education. In 1900 the illiterate population 10 years of age and over amounted to only 2.3 per cent. of the population, there being but two States which had a better record. This result was attained notwithstanding the fact that the State's compulsory attendance law has been a dead letter. Since the population is largely rural, Kansas has had to contend with the problem of rural education in an exaggerated form. ”