cost the human race to
pass from one condition to the other in these various lines. Hundreds
and thousands of men have worked and died in the struggle and in the
process of bringing about improvements. Every calamity due to inadequate
machines or to poor methods has had its influence toward causing further
advancements in inventions for the benefit of mankind.

=Progress in Higher Education.=--Let us now turn our attention to the
progress that has been made in the field of academic education. It is
true that many of the great universities were established centuries ago.
These were at first endowed church institutions or theological
seminaries; but the great state universities of this country are
creations of the progressive period under consideration. General
taxation for higher education is comparatively a modern practice. The
University of Michigan was one of the first state universities
established. Since then nearly every commonwealth, whether it has come
into the Union since that time or whether it is one of the older states,
has established a university. There has been a great development of
higher education by the states. No institutions of the country have
grown more rapidly within the last thirty or forty years than the state
universities. They have established departments of every kind. Besides
the college of liberal arts there are in most of them colleges or
schools of law, medicine, engineering in its several lines, education,
pharmacy, dentistry, commerce, industrial arts, and fine arts. The state
university is abroad in the land; it has, as a rule, an extension
department by which it impresses itself upon the people of the state,
outside its walls. The principle of higher education by taxation of all
the people is no longer questioned; it is no longer an experiment. The
state university is relied upon to furnish the country with the leaders
of the future--and leaders will always be in demand, for they are always
sorely needed.

=Progress in Normal Schools.=--While the state universities have been
enjoying this marvelous development, nearly every state has been
establishing normal schools for the professional preparation of
teachers. The normal school as an institution is also modern. As an
institution established and supported by state taxation it is, as a
rule, more recent than the universities. Forty years ago many good
people regarded the normal school idea as visionary and its realization
as a doubt