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Show 24 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT District of Columbia which had received no scrip from the Morrill Act.58 More than a flurry of excitement about the use of public lands for education occurred in 1872. It was partly spurred by the states' disappointment at the meager returns from the sale of their college scrip and by the inability of the new agricultural and mechanical (A & M) institutions to generate any very effective program in agriculture and industrial arts. To focus attention upon the near failure of the new colleges, resulting from insufficient support, the United States Commissioner of Agriculture, in consultation with many leading agricultural authorities and officials of the state institutions, called a conference in Washington early in 1872. Apparently the objective was to ask Congress for more aid for the colleges and perhaps more generous treatment of the Department of Agriculture. Some 160 persons came together at a National Agricultural Convention. They included such well-known men as A. B. Allen and Ezra Cornell of New York, Marshall Pinckney Wilder and C. L. Flint of Massachusetts, John H. Klippart of Ohio, William W. Folwell of Minnesota and Senator Morrill. In such a diverse group drawn from all but one or two states there was bound to be considerable wrangling over objectives and the means to attain them. Proposals to grant additional land for the A & M institutions were prominent in the discussion. Members from the old states favored land grants and those from the new states preferred the donations of proceeds from the sales of land. Wrilliam W. Folwell of Minnesota objected vigorously to what he called the discrimination in the Morrill Act which gave new states so little in comparison with the grants to the old states. Folwell favored equalizing grants, based partly on area and not solely on population, that would assure each state a minimum of a half million acres. Others favored equalizing grants of a million acres to each state. Sectional feelings and a tendency of the members to wander from one subject to another prevented the adoption of a request for any such generous aid. Senator Morrill did succeed in inducing the convention to ask Congress for a donation of land, or the proceeds therefrom, sufficient to "found a professorship of some of the branches of practical science" in each of the A & M colleges. The National Agricultural Convention brought together the leading spokesmen for technical training of young farmers and made them aware of common problems and of divergent interests. The convention helped keep before the people questions relating to public lands and had its part in intensifying eastern desires for a share of the proceeds. At the time it strengthened the conviction of the West that the public lands should be granted to the states in which they were located and that no further grants should be made to the old states.59 Influenced by the discussion on the floor of the convention concerning the inadequacy of the support for A & M institutions and the inequity of the Act of 1862, Senator Morrill introduced a bill to grant one million acres to each state for the benefit of the colleges. He was quite aware of western sentiment against grants of land or scrip for lands in the states or territories and he later amended his measure to provide that the proceeds from the sale of lands, rather than the lands themselves, should be thus granted; he also reduced the acreage from one million to half 58 Senate Journal, 40th Cong., 1st sess., 1867 (Serial No. 1307), p. 69; Senate Journal, 41st Cong., 1st sess., 1869 (Serial No. 1392), p. 187. 59 The "Proceedings of the National Agricultural Convention" of Feb. 15-17, 1872, as published in the S. Misc. Doc, 42d Cong., 2d sess., 1872, No. 164 (Serial No. 1482), are particularly valuable for the light they throw on the management by Ohio, Maine, New York, Illinois, and a number of other states of the scrip they received under the provisions of the Morrill Act of 1862. See especially the statements of Professor J. M. Gregory of Illinois Industrial University, Ezra Cornell, William W. Folwell, and John H. Klippart. |