Science à la Carte 7In 8 7 , Morrill stood before his colleagues in Congress and made
his case that falling yields in crops like wheat and potatoes stemmed
from deficient agricultural knowledge and skills. The United States
had ninety-five times more land than England, he pointed out before
adding that America was importing over $ million in agricultural
products while Europe was investing in agricultural colleges.
America needed to learn from European scientific advances, Mor-
rill argued, but Congress had a responsibility to establish science in
America by helping each state build an agricultural college. Financing
could come from the sale of public land.
His proposal was welcomed by many and rejected by others. One
senator from Minnesota decried, “We want no fancy farmers; we want
no fancy mechanics.” Southern legislators were mostly opposed.
One called it “one of the most monstrous, iniquitous, and dangerous
measures which have ever been submitted to Congress.” Said another,
the proposal was “an unconstitutional robbing of the Treasury for the
purpose of bribing the States.” Not all farmers were on board, either.
Some had deep concerns that their sons might leave farming. As one
said, “All I want my boys to know is the Bible and figgers.”
It took two years before Morrill won over enough supporters.
No sooner did Congress pass his proposed Land-Grant Act than
President Buchanan vetoed it. Among his reasons, the bill encouraged
states to be reliant on the federal government for their systems of
education whereby “the character of both Governments will be greatly
deteriorated.”
Morrill persisted and in 86 Congress approved a revised version
that President Lincoln signed the following year. Colleges of agriculture
in each state were just the beginning. A second land-grant bill target-
ing former Confederate states was eventually added. Additional laws
were enacted to provide funding, set up state experiment stations for
laboratory and field trials, and build an outreach network to transfer
the results to farmers and rural communities nationwide.
What Morrill launched became a four-legged platform for the ad-
vancement of science. The first leg was public financing. Funding re-
search through the government rather than corporations or private