Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1871 [PAGE 306]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

298 upon a motion to adopt or to amend, or to do something with the report. The report was made the special order for eleven o'clock. The President—The hour has come for the consideration of the special order, wThich is the report of the Committee on Peimanent Organization. The report was received and adopted. Mr. Folwell—I move that the discussion contemplated by the report take place now. The motion was adopted. Mr. Folwell—I do not wish it to be thought that I had any special proposition to bring forward here. I would remark, if you p ] ease, sir, that coming here quite unexpectedly, I did not know what I was to find here or whom I was to meet here exactly. And when it was proposed here, to form a permanent organization, the question immediately aro^e in my mind, of whom shall this Association be composed, what shall be its constitution, and what shall its object be? And as a member of the committee to which that matter was referred, I did not feel willing to begin to draw the articles of our association until I should know something about it from a discussion of a kind that may now take place—what has taken place and wThat is wanted. I will say very briefly, that for my own part, if there shall be a permanent organization, I would wish that it would be a practical one, and a broad one; that it should exclude nobody ; that it should not be confined to agricultural nor mechanical matters exclusively, but to embrace all subjects which may properly be brought within the scope of institutions as founded by the land grant of Congress. I suppose we can do no business in the matter now. As we do not come here as delegates from our various institutions, we cannot do t anything which will commit them. Mr. Flagg—I suppose, in holding this meeting, we are exercising that inalienable right of American citizens of forming an organization for any purpose we choose. Of course wTe cannot commit anybody but ourselves. We are simply here as individuals. "While what we may do here will not bind anybody, it still may have very considerable effect at home. It is not in our power to bind anybody except so far as we are concerned as individuals. In regard to the calling of this meeting, with which I had something to do, I can only state my own views and leave others to do the same. This organization arose primarily from a consultation that Dr. Miles and myself were having at Lansing in reference to agricultural experi-