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Show iVIIAT AEOUT THE MERGER? : V' t - Every righteous cause should hive a full show (Ing, hence the following is gladlj given space: ' To the -Editor of The Evening Telegram : . - I hava been taking another loolrat your editorial of 6aU - arday last on the question of merging ths Agricultural .col-. .col-. ; lag with the. Universitv. Whatever might be the value of : , your judgment in behalf of separate maintenance, yoa have . , . demonstrated conclusively that there is no ''merger" of lo-? lo-? eal interest in Salt Lake City, so far as the University is concerned. That a resident of Salt Lake can advocate the Logan interest pnblicly and still live should be something . for the Logan campaigners to ponder over when charging . , that the agitation for consolidation originated in the selfishness selfish-ness of Salt Lake City. , Some whose' line of data has been ' somewhat different from that which seems to preponderate - In your office think your statement of the case by no means sonelnsive, but they believe you sincere. I, for instance, am quite rare that your position ss expressed in that editorial is wrong, from nrst to last, and believing you sincere, my purpose in this communication is to give you a little sincere insight into the other point of view. In the first place, you proceed to discount President Kingsbury's judgment on the ground .that he is not a farmer. If you limit the value of President Kingsbury's judgment of the methods of agricultural education to his farming ex- Jterience, you cannot object to applying the same rule to the udgments of those urging the advantages of methods con- trarv to his. If this application of your rule is just, the readers of your criticism of the merger method are entitled to know how much farming experience has" entered into the making of your judgments in the case. Suoting President Kingsbury's statement that "by conation con-ation the State would save whatever is necessary now to appropriate to the Aericnltural college." you ask, "If that is true, what is Prof. Kingsbury's anxiety to have the consolidation! " I apprehend that if "President Kingsbury were to answer your question, he would simplv ask you. "If that is true." "other things being equal, which is plainlv President Kingsburv's meaning, why should not every honest citizen of the State of Utah feel and express an "anxiety t have consolidation!" President Kingsburv knows, or is in a position to know from the public records, that the State has been contributing to the school at Logan since its organ iration sums ranging from A0,00O to $100,000 a year, in addition to an annnal Government appropriation of $25,000 to $45,000; that as a result of this expenditure a school has been established whose attendance last year was about 675, over 600 of whom were in and below the high school grade; that of this number only a very small proportion were in agricultural courses, and onlv nine were working for a degree de-gree in agriculture; that of" the vast sums which th institution in-stitution is receiving annually from the Government and the State, only about $'J2.0O0 was expended in the teaching of agricultural science; that with the exception of a few courses, which could not at the utmost cost more than $30O) a year, all the other work aside from agriculture and domestic do-mestic science is a duplication of the work done in the University Uni-versity and various high school of the State, and that even the agriculture of high school grades and the domestic science is now being done to a very considerable extent by local high schools in othfr parts of the State at an expens-to expens-to their patrons which is insignificant compared with what the State is paying for the name work at Logan. Now, these facts put together mean simply that in main taining the Agricultural college apart from the University it is expending these large sums annuallv. not one Hollar of which is being devoted to agricultural xciepce direct, and making it necessary for the president in order to keep tel school running harmoniously to expend pearly halt the j Government appropriation for purppss other thnn tor the i teaching of agnculture. ; Now, if it is a fact that agricultural s"ience can b taught with equal success a one of the several schools of j the University, then the difference between the cost of a j high school of 600 students, under normal condition, plus the $30i0 expended for the non-agricultural courses we are i taught in the University, and the amount which the State I annualllv appropriates is wasted, and even in that prepos terous situation you have $23.Od of Government monev thrown in for possible discrepancies, and for expending and improving the Agricultural s'-hool. j If now these 600 grade and high school students, instead years Again, of the Government appropriation only $23,000 can be expended in an educational way;, the re&t has to be expended in experiments. Of the students stu-dents in the school last year, 147 were in the degree courses,, and when our correspondent says "the rest1 are in the high; school courses,' the question na-! turally arises, ."HoW is' it with, the University J.M ; . , I As we understand it, there are some 900 students! in the. University,, 00 of whom are in the prepam-j tory course; though there is in this city a' high school of over 1200 students. But there'is another point of difference between the two,-a student can fit himself or herself in the high school here for a course in the University. He or she' cannot, in any high school prepare for a course in the Logan school, hence such preparatory course is absolutely necessary at Logan. Our correspondent complains because there re students stu-dents from Idaho in the Logan school. In point of fact, there are students in Logan from thirteen States and two foreign countries. The State could stop that by a law, but it wouhl be a little queer, inasmuch in-asmuch as Utah students are in all the great Eastern and Western colleges and universities. Now. the University is made up of three schools, the School of Arts, the School of Mines, and the Normal. Nor-mal. (By the way, as we understand it. the University Univer-sity is asking for an appropriation for the School of Arts, another for the School of Mines, another for the Normal, which three make the Universitv. and then a separate one for the University itself). Now, the Logan school has to have separate professors pro-fessors for the Sehool of Agriculture, the School of Arts, the School of Mechanic Arts, the School of Commerce, and one or two others. There have to be professors for agronomy, irrigation and drainage, horticulture, entomology, animal industry, dairying, veterinary science, and poultry industry. Last year $50,000 was expended at Logan in the work that the University does not teach. Again, in answer to another statement of our correspondent, there are very many more students, a greater proportion pro-portion of students in the University from Slt Lake City, than there is in Logan from Cach" county. Again, the State of Missouri has merged the Agricultural Agricul-tural college with the State University. It has 20O0 students. But of these, only l.0 are agricultural students. Iowa has a separate agricultural school, and of the 1000 students, over 10X" are in the agricultural agri-cultural class. The University here, we believe, has some 900 students after forty years of life. The Logan school has ."0. having existed less than half that time. The school was greatly reduced last year for two reasons; the rirst was that the Legislature Leg-islature fnrhade the teaching of engineering in the school. Those who were in that course and partly throncrh. had to en to schools east nnd west to (om- pMp their studies. The other was that h week before be-fore the term began a yreat building at Logan, with all the mechaniral implements, was destroyed. The 110 aeres at Logan is all beinc used, and in ndditiim the sehool. in connection with the government. leased fifteen aeres for experimental purposes, particularly par-ticularly for the propagation of beets. Now. it seems to ns that the argument of our correspondent but cmphasi7cs the need of the two schools. There is no h i arh school in the State th;it can prepare students for the Agricultural school. If that were merged with the T'niversitv. th" result would be to crreatly increase the preparatory class, and if the advocates of the merger rire sincere, and their thought is to keep the Agricultural school up to its present status, then a new site for the rniver-sity rniver-sity must be had. for there is neither the land nor the water at its present site. Why. the poultry alone at Locran occupies ten acres. It seems to ns the schools are running on divergent di-vergent lines, and they both are very necessary. And the argument of our correspondent, if seems to in, when the facts are brought out. is a conclusive imo. 'hat there should he no merger of the schools. of being maintained at Iogan. were distributed among the several local high schools of the State, thereby increasing the local attendance not more perhaps than an average ot twenty five to the school, the increase of local cost would be insignificant, while the stimulus of increased attendance would he very great. But this statement as applied to the present controversy partakes more of principle than fact. Th fact is that the attendance at-tendance et Logan is largely local, including nearly 1"0 from southern Idlho. and the issue trust here turn upon the in justice of taxing the entire people of the P'ate for the main tenance of an expensive high school for Cache county and itouthern Idaho. If th" State has money to spare for high achool support, it should be justly distributed throughout the State, a policy which I am prepared to advocate most heartilv. and that applies to both the Agricultural college and the preparatory school of the University of 1 tah. The item ff the equation which remains to h settled is the question. Will the merging of the institutions pro p a disadvantage to the teaching of agriculture f In attacking this oiist ion. in view of your attempt to rule out the judgment of President Kingsbury on the score of no agricultural experience, if seems necessary for me to say tnat the writer of this a practical farmer, having spent ten of the best years of his life in the labor of fencing, ploughing, sowing, irrigating, harvesting, experimenting with crops and fertilizers, breeding cattle and horses, building barns, rfsrrvnirs. canals, etc. Three years more of his life were spent in a university, one of the schools of which was the State Agricultural college, and one of the most successful success-ful and best patronized agricultural colleges in the 1'ni'ed States. A letter from the principal of that college is to be found in the index of the report of the I'tah college com mission, along with the testimony of other principals w'noe experience with agricultural colleges ir ail pha-es s'norld Tnak their judgment alualde to the citizen of I'tah who when taxed to support an institution for the teaching of agriculture has an "anx'etv" to have the money it thus! expend do its full measure of the work for which it is in tended. If yui wish your roarers U know my opinion on the probable effect of consolidation upon the teaching of ag rieulture. it is to tie found in detail in the letters of Dr. Bailov of Cornell. Dr. Waters of the 'Missouri State Pniversity. and Dr. Henrv of the University of Wisconsin. In brief, it is that a fully successful agricultural school, except in conr.ee tion with an aggregation of college work, which forms flic most expensive feature of every well equipped university, is an'ntter impossibility. Moreover, there is not one of' the Wll-lfornied members of the Loan "push" who will dis put this fact. Tn other words, the movement for consoli dation is quite as much in the interest of agricultural teaching teach-ing u It ia in the interest of the taxpayer. C. In answer to the foregoing, we wish to say that we did not discount President Kinesbury's statement state-ment on the pround that he was not afanner. We only concluded, when we read his statement, that if the schools were merped, the Agricultural school would cost nothinp; that he not only could not he a farmer, but that he has no conception of what an agricultural ag-ricultural school needs. If the president meant that there would be no added expense over the present, then his question. "Why should consolidation be opposed!" op-posed!" can be readily answered by saying that the merger would cause the Agricultural school to cease to be a specialty, and would be liable to become, as is the school in California, merely an unimportant annex to the University. Our correspondent asks "why every honest citizen citi-zen of the State of I'tah should not feel an anxiety to have the consolidation!" The answer is. there would be great loss and no apparent pain. Our correspondent cor-respondent is mistaken when he says "the State has been contributing to the Agricultural collepp from $50,000 to $100,000 a year, in addition to the Government Gov-ernment appropriation of from $25,000 to $45,000; that as a result of this expenditure there are about , , 75 Rtudents. over 600 of whom are in and below the high school grades." Now, in truth the highest appropriation the Legislature Leg-islature ever made to the Agricultural school was two years ago, when it was $170,000 for the two |