the men upon her Faculties, Michigan stood
far in advance of other state institutions. This very pre-eminence,
however, threw a greater responsibility upon the new President. Lacking
precedents, he had to make them for himself, so that the place of the
state university in the educational world today is in great degree the
measure of success he had in dealing with the practical problems which
confronted him throughout his extraordinarily long term of office. When
he came to Michigan there was only one other state university of any
size, Wisconsin, although several others had already been established.
According to the report of the United States Commissioner of Education
for 1871, none of them except Michigan, and possibly Wisconsin, were in
anything like a flourishing condition. While Michigan had, all told,
1,110 students, of whom 483 were in the Literary Department, Wisconsin
had only 355, omitting a preparatory department of 131 students.
Minnesota had but 167 students with 144 in the preparatory department,
while Kansas enrolled 313. No figures were given for Illinois, which was
then the Illinois Industrial University, and Nebraska, both of which had
been established for several years.

Yet Michigan, although she was well in the lead in point of numbers as
well as in the strength of her professional schools, was far from
realizing her possibilities. It would, of course, be a rash assertion to
say that she has realized them now. But it is safe to say that no state
has maintained more truly the type of the well-rounded university, a
large college of liberal arts, with traditions of culture and
scholarship which began with its very foundation, surrounded by a ring
of effective professional schools.

Two years after he came the present system of revenue from the State was
first made operative. This came in the form of an annual proportion of
the state taxes, fixed at first at one-twentieth of a mill on every
dollar of taxable property; a proportion which continued for twenty
years. Since then it has been increased several times until it is now
three-eighths of a mill on every dollar; it netted the University in
1909, the last year of his administration, $650,000 instead of the
$15,000 of 1873. The total income of the University for that year was
$1,290,000 as against $76,702.52 received during his first year.

It was perhaps on the more strictly academic side of the development of
the University that Dr. Angell's pecul