Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Seventy Years

overdrafts. Nearly $2,000 was still unpaid on the building account, including the $1,000 voted to James White for his able supervision. The balance was needed immediately for grading, fencing and other improvements. The committee also estimated that the annual operating expenses for the next three years would approximate $14,600, and that the probable income would be less than $13,000.

In this dilemma the Corporation appealed to the Commonwealth for aid to the extent of $50,000. The petitioners, Stephen Salisbury, Emory Washburn, James B. Blake and George F. Hoar, forcefully set forth the claims of the Institute, reminding the honorable members of the General Court of their munificence to other Massachusetts institutions, and urging them to aid the development of manufacturing and mechanical pursuits as they had aided the cause of the learned professions. The committee on education heard these claims expounded on February 11, 1869. Seldom has a cause been more brilliantly advocated than by the two trustees who presented the principal arguments, Governor Washburn and Hon. George F. Hoar.

Mr. Hoar based his argument on the assertions that the mechanical classes had a right to demand this aid from Massachusetts, that their better education was a necessity of self-preservation for the State, and that the scheme of education contemplated by the Institute was practical and wise. He drew upon the classical allusions to the value of education, upon testimony of European educators and statesmen, and demonstrated the power of logical eloquence that was later to sway the United States Senate and mark him as a leading statesman of his generation. Emory Washburn followed with a speech of equal eloquence, in which he outlined the beginnings of the school and prophesied what contributions its graduates would make to the industrial development of the state.

Whether impressed by these arguments, or worn down by the length of them, the committee gave its unanimous

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