Report on Morrill Act Extension of 1910, Legislation

EXTENSION OF MORRILL ACTS TO THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

FEBRARY 14, 1910- Ordered to be printed.

Mr. Burnham, from the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, submitted the following

REPORT.

            Then Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, to whom was referred the bill (S. 530) to amend an act entitled “An act donating public lands to the several States and Territories which may provide colleges for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts,” approved July 2, 1862, and the acts supplementary thereto, so as to the expand the benefits thereof to the District of Columbia, have given the same a careful consideration, with two public hearings, and beg leave to submit the following report, with the recommendation that the bill will pass without amendment.

            This bill contains two provisions:

1. Its primary purpose is to make available  for the District of Colombia the annual appropriations now made to the States and Territories in accordance with the first Morrill Act of July 2, 1862, and the amendatory acts of August 30, 1890, and March 4, 1907, for the “endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one college” in their respective jurisdictions, “where the leading objects shall be to teach such branches of learning as are related  to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits  and professions in life.”
2. In order to make the said appropriation immediately effective, Congress, as the legislative body for the District of Colombia, designates the George Washington University, a nonsectarian institution, to administer the appropriation under said act of Congress, as amended.

I.

            There seems to be no good reason why the District of Colombia should not be included with the States and Territories, and with Hawaii and Porto Rico, in the terms and benefits of the Morrill Acts. For the purposes of the Morrill Acts the District is as a separate a territorial entity and as integral a portion of the country as an y Territory, and would , in fact, have benefitted by the Morrill Acts if its quasiterritorial form of government had not been changed by Congress.

            The population of the District already exceeds the population of six or seven of the States and territories. It includes some 30,000 heads of families who still retain their residence in various States and Territories of the Union now being benefitted under the Morrill Acts. These people are bona fide constituents of the members of Congress, and they ought not to be deprived of the privileges accorded to students elsewhere in the United States.

II.

            In regard to the objections which certain nonresidents have made to the designation of the George Washington University as the institution that is administer this appropriation for the benefit of the District of Colombia, the committee would report as follows:

1. It was not the intention of the act of 1862 to force each State to establish a “stat’” college or university in order to be qualified to administer this fund. At least six institutions on private foundations, offering the prescribed courses of study, have been so designated in the past by the legislatures of their respective States; and such action has had the approval of the Interior Department, and tacit consent of Congress, for more than a generation, as being within the letter and spirit of the Morrill Acts. Those institutions were: Yale University, Connecticut; Brown University, Rhode Island; Clemson Agricultural College, South Carolina; The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts; Rutgers Scientific School, New Jersey; and Cornell University, New York. Connecticut and Rhode Island have since established their own state institutions, and Clemson has become a state institution; but Rutgers, Cornell, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are still private corporations, and they hold exactly the same relation to heir respective States in regard t the local application of the benefits of the Morrill Acts as the George Washington University would hold to the District of Colombia. The purpose of these acts is to promote “the practical and liberal education of the industrial classes,” and the designations of the institution that is to administer this fund in the several States has been left by Congress and the Interior Department to the discretion of the state legislatures. Congress, as the legislative body for the District of Colombia, must therefore exercise a similar discretion in regard to the practical and local features of this bill. By its present character the George Washington University is already subject to the visitorial and supervisory power of Congress. That charter expressly provides that the books of the university shall, “at all times, be open to the inspection or examination of the Attorney-General of the United States,” and that “when required by either House of Congress, it shall be the duty of [its] trustees to furnish any information respecting their own conduct, the state of the institution and of its finances.” Moreover, by the terms of this bill, four federal officials would be made ex officio trustees of the university, and an annual report on all its work would have to be made to Congress. For the purposes of the Morrill Acts this university would therefore be a public institution, to the extent required by these acts, and it could perform a much needed public service for the District of Colombia.