The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of Education FARMERS, SCIENTISTS, AND OFFICERS OF INDUSTRY: THE FORMATION AND REFORMATION OF LAND-GRANT COLLEGES IN THE NORTHEASTERN UNITED STATES, 1862-1906 A Dissertation in Higher Education by Nathan M. Sorber © 2011 Nathan M. Sorber Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2011 This dissertation of Nathan M. Sorber was reviewed and approved* by the following: Roger L. Geiger Distinguished Professor of Higher Education Dissertation Advisor Chair of Committee In Charge of Graduate Programs in Higher Education Lisa R. Lattuca Professor of Higher Education Roger L. Williams Affiliate Professor of Higher Education William A. Blair Professor of History * Signatures are on file in the Graduate School ii Abstract This dissertation examines the formation, reformation, and standardization of land-grant colleges in the Northeastern United States during the last four decades of the nineteenth century. It is a history that explores the turbulent origins of land-grant colleges in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. A coalition of gentlemen farmers from state agricultural societies, scientists trained in German universities, and economically-minded statesman led the region‘s land-grant movement in the 1860s and 1870s. Men like Daniel Coit Gilman, Evan Pugh, Samuel Johnson, Andrew Dickson White, and Justin Morrill were intent on building institutions that could nurture scientific study and advance agricultural, industrial, and national development. These educational reformers wanted colleges with advanced curricula and stiff admissions standards, which would graduate leaders for a new economy in science, engineering, and business. The rise of state granges in the 1880s organized farmers against this ―National Schools of Science‖ model. Farmers held a proprietary attitude towards land-grant colleges, due to the legislation‘s commitment to agriculture and the industrial classes, and demanded vocational curricula, required labor, and broad access. Grange leaders insisted that land-grant colleges abandon advanced science and liberal arts courses in favor of an agricultural curriculum and practical farm training to become true ―Peoples‘ Colleges.‖ It was hoped that such vocational programs would curb the rapid outmigration of rural youth to urban, middle class jobs occurring in the latter half of the nineteenth century, by returning college graduates home to the farm. By the 1890s, farmers succeeded in reforming the region‘s higher education landscape by seizing land- grant funds from Brown, Dartmouth, and Yale and founding new colleges that would in time become the University of Connecticut, the University of New Hampshire, and the University of Rhode Island. The grange only briefly implemented their practical education model at these new institutions, coming into competition with the vocational programs of an emerging public high school sector. To remain viable and increase enrollments, the institutions of the land-grant reformation minimized their agricultural curricula and were refashioned as ―state colleges.‖ With enhanced academic standards, a burgeoning campus life, and no required labor, these new state colleges abandoned the old mantra of producing farmers, and embraced a new role as gatekeepers of social mobility into the middle class. The land-grant colleges maintained their historic commitment to the agricultural classes through agricultural extension, short courses, and rural community outreach. Cornell University became a national leader of this emerging land- grant college standard: rigorous academics, liberal curricula, and extension and outreach to farmers and agricultural communities. This history reveals that the guiding principles of land- grant colleges were formed through contentious inter-class dialogue between farmers, scientists, and bourgeois reformers. Industrialization and the rise of modern capitalism produced economic classes with conflicting educational visions and curricular demands, and the process of creating and controlling land-grant colleges is best conceived as a contest to protect or elevate the status, power, and economic privileges of different classes. The sources of the tension were opposing beliefs of the proper progression of America capitalism and land-grant colleges‘ relationship to that development. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables …………………………………………………………………………………………vi List of Figures ………………………………………………………………………………………..vii Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………………………viii CHAPTER ONE, Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 Land-Grant Historiography: The Chimera of Popular Demand................................................ 11 A New Economic Order ........................................................................................................... 20 Agricultural and Rural Communities in the Northeast.............................................................. 29 New Demands on Higher Education......................................................................................... 37 Demands for Agricultural Higher Education ................................................................... 37 New Middle Class Demands for Higher Education ......................................................... 39 The Higher Education Response………........................................................................... 41 Research Questions ..…………………………………………………………………………. 48 Overview of Chapters ............................................................................................................... 48 CHAPTER TWO, The First Forty Years of Land-Grant Education in the Northeastern United States …………………………………………………………………………………..51 Introduction……....................................................................................................................... 51 Independence or Partnership, 1862-1867.....……………………………………………….... 52 The Rise of the Grange: 1873-1886.......................................................................................... 67 The Rise of Cornell University and the Farmers‘ Critique ……………………….................. 85 Raising the Stakes: 1887-1894…………………………………………………..……………100 Gradual Standardization ……………………………………………………………………. 110 CHAPTER THREE, The Origins of Land-Grant Education in the Northeastern United States: Creating Colleges of Science, Industry, and National Advance……........................ 114 Introduction………................................................................................................................. 114 Agricultural Societies and Science …………………………………..................................... 118 American Students in Europe ................................................................................................. 127 Creating National Schools of Science .…………………………………………………….. 133 Schools of Industry and National Advance.………………………………………………… 145 The Northeastern Land-Grant College.……………………………………………………... 156 Conclusion…………………………...……………………………………………………… 190 CHAPTER FOUR, The Land-Grant Reformation in the Northeastern United States, 1873- 1894…...................................................................................................................... 192 Introduction………................................................................................................................ 192 The Road to a Land-Grant College at Storrs, Connecticut ………….................................... 197 Rhode Island ……………….................................................................................................. 225 The University of Vermont ………….……………………………………………………. 251 Conclusions……………………………… ………………………………………………. 259 iv CHAPTER FIVE, The Curious Cases of John Washburn and George Flint and the Forces of Land-Grant Standardization, 1890-1906......…........................................................ 261 Introduction………................................................................................................................ 262 Max Schaffrath: A Student at Storrs at the End of the Century……..................................... 265 President George Flint and the ―War of the Rebellion‖…………......................................... 271 ―Profane, Vulgar, Unclean, and Unchaste in Speech and Behavior‖……………………… 287 The Washburn Aftermath....................................................................................................... 299 The Land-Grant College Reveals its Modern Form………………………………………. 305 CHAPTER SIX, Conclusions…….................................................................................................... 314 APPENDIX, Class Definition Essay…............................................................................................. 322 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……..................................................................................................................... 327 v LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1 – Summary of Land-Grant Colleges in the Northeastern United States ………………3 Table 1.2 – Persistence by age group in Chelsea, Vermont ……………………………………..32 Table 3.1 – Maine State College Classes of 1872-1875: Social Origins and Career Trajectory……………………………………………………………………… 162 Table 3.2 – Distribution of Maine State College Graduates (1872-75) by Parent‘s Real Estate and Personal Property……………………………………………………………………….162 Table 3.3 –