MINUTES OF TXE BOA.-RD OF TRUSTEES, Jun-.,1906 Page 74 (conttd)



drilled into the conviction that the State College was inimical
to the plan for establishing independent Normal School and
during the brief session of the General Assembly it was im-
possible to disabuse them of this imoression.


     Another obstacle which we encountered was the alleged de-
ficiency of Revenue and the slow progress of the Revenue Bill
through the General  Assembly.  Other measures, however, in-
volving the expenditures of money passed the Lower House and we
could not quite see why our application should not have had      P. 75
equal consideration. I feel sure if our bills could have been
gotten out of the hands of the Committees on Appropriations
and Rules, that for Agriculture would certainly have passed the
lower House and that for a Normal School Building would in all
probability have gone through.


     It is gratifying to learn from the Report of the Dean of
the Normal Department that there has been a marked increase
in attendance in that course of study during the last year.
Many persons feared that the resignation of the former head of
the Department would materially diminish its matriculation and
impair its prestige. The result has been quite the contrary.
Instead of a loss we have gotten rid of an incubus which re-
tarded its development and hindered its growth.


     It is, however, a serious drawback that we failed to get
an appropriation for a building for its use. The best element
in the State which seeks Normal School instruction will, from
the Consideration of the sunerior advantages offered by the
State College, come to us in preference to either Bowling Green
or Richmond. In neither of these can they have the manifest
benefit accruing from the intimate relationship of the Normal
School to the Collateral Courses of Classics4 Modern Languages,
English Literature, Philosophy, History and. Science provided
in the State College. The broading and humanizing influences
of these associations will be altogether wanting in the organi-
zation of the self contained Normal Schools.


     What is true of the circumscribed limits of the Normal
Department is true of the Agricultural Department. It is more
popular now than it ever has been in the history of the college.
Men are more anxious to obtain the scientific training which
will fit them for conuiucting intelligently the operation of
husbandry. Wider fields of activity and of renumerative occu-
pation in Ahriculture and Horticulture are opening up and in-
viting the trained scientific investigators than ever before.