136
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136
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Transcription
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those gloomy years, and of these qualities he had large store. Even adverse conditions he skilfully [sic] utilized and urged the general economic stagnation as a fitting occasion to get an education. " If you cannot earn, you at least can learn," and his sensible advice and particularly his attractive personality, not too far removed from his hearers' comprehension, had peculiar weight in those days of doubt and indecision. He never lost an opportunity to set forth with a vigor and cogency unprecedented in earlier administrations the scope and aims of the State University. In the East denominational colleges were numerous and strong, deeply rooted in the social life, and secure in a well-defined clientele; in the West the educational field was relatively unoccupied and it was the function of the state to occupy it. Here education should send out new roots and derive support from every class. Many-sided, democratic, free; unhampered by tradition and keenly alive to practical needs, the University was to be not merely to the select few an exclusive club, but to all alike the open door to useful knowledge and practical wisdom. This was the continual burden of Chancellor Canfield's message, delivered in season and out of season everywhere up and down the state. The idea, to be sure, was not wholly new, but still after twenty years of existence the University had not greatly developed nor found a particularly warm place in the hearts of the people. It was of primal importance that numbers should be greatly augmented if the University was to bulk large in the consciousness of the people and secure for itself the material support it required. Throughout the state were many young persons intelligent and capable, but unschooled beyond the rudiments of learning. To set this large body in motion towards the University preliminary attainments in knowledge must not be too rigidly prescribed, nor the indicated goal put too remote. Hence the Chancellor's favorite definition of the University as merely the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth grades of the common schools. It was hardly adequate, and today we realize that a university comprehends something more than that; but then, and under Chancellor Canfield's skilful
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