Seventy Years Of The Worcester Polytechnic Institute: Page 166

in 1893. Major cause, however, was the constant and increasing friction with groups of the faculty and the trustees. The break was inevitable. His formal letter of resignation was read to the trustees in April, 1894. At the same meeting negotiations with his successor were begun, a coincidence that permits few interpretations.

Dr. Fuller's farewell address was in a vein similar to that of his inaugural twelve years before, "The Progress of Technical Education." In it he outlined the general development of this type of education, but devoted most of his time to a review of the Institute's growth during its first quarter century. It was the best historical paper on the founding, early struggles, and subsequent successes of the Institute that had ever been written. Dr. Fuller showed a keen understanding of Institute problems, and expressed sincere appreciation of cooperation that he had received. Unquestionably, he had labored under great handicaps, and it is probable that those whose criticisms of him were most harsh were the ones who either placed obstacles in his path or who were not actively enough interested to understand him.

Soon after Dr. Fuller left Worcester, in the summer of 1894, it was announced that he had been elected president of Drury College at Springfield, Missouri, then in its twentysecond year. Mrs. Fuller and their two daughters accompanied him to Springfield; their son, Henry J. Fuller, remained at Worcester to complete his course at the Institute and to graduate with the class of 1895. Dr. Fuller's administration at Drury continued until 1905, when he retired to Saranac, New York, where he died August 15, 1908, at the age of sixty-nine.

The period of Dr. Fuller's presidency at the Institute was one of material and educational expansion. In these twelve years there was also a substantial increase in the size of the graduate body, from 233 living members in 1882 to 601 in 1894. With growth in numbers there had also come growth in interest and a sense of responsibility for the

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