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Creating a Fourth Branch of State Government: The University of California and the Constitutional Convention of 1879

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

John Aubrey Douglass
John Aubrey Douglass*
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara's division of the Academic Senate
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Extract

The state constitutional convention of 1879 significantly changed the status of California's land-grant university. Throughout the 1870s, farmers and labor groups accused the university's Board of Regents with mismanagement of federal land grants, corruption, and a failure to establish agriculture, mining, and mechanical arts programs as outlined in the federal Morrill Act and statutory provisions within the state's 1868 Organic Act. During a tumultuous decade in California history, many saw the new University of California as serving the interests of the upper classes, focusing on classical “gentlemanly training” and replicating the Yankee private institutions of the East. The detractors of the university demanded that, as an instrument of social and economic development, the university primarily serve the training and research needs of agriculture and industry, the stated “leading objective” of the institution under statutory law.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , Spring 1992 , pp. 31 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1 Gregory, Bion M. (Legislative Counsel of California) to State Senator Mello, Henry J., 6 Jan. 1989, California Postsecondary Education Commission Library; Constitution of the State of California (1879), art. 9, sec. 9; Joint Committee on Legislative Organization, Constitution Revision Commission, “Article IX, Education: Background Study,” Jan. 1969, 16–19, University of California, Santa Barbara Archives.Google Scholar

2 Cleland, Robert Glass, introduction in a special Huntington Library edition of the Constitution of the State of California. 1849 (San Marino, 1949).Google Scholar

3 Delegates of the 1849 Constitutional Convention, “Address to the People of California,” in Constitution of 1849 ; Hansen, Woodrow James, The Search for Authority in California (Oakland, 1960), 88. To speed up the efforts of the delegates, Representative Halleck, H. W. noted the need to review and borrow from “the constitution of every state in the Union.” Ross Browne, J., Report of the Debates in the Convention of California on the Formation of the State Constitution, in September and October, 1849 (Washington, D.C., 1850) 25, 27, 36, 40, 231; “It is significant that the best state school systems in 1850 were found in New York, New England, and Ohio,” explains historian Falk, Charles J. “It is also interesting to note that, while the constitution of California leaned heavily on the U.S. Constitution, and the constitutions of seven states (Iowa, Louisiana, New York, Michigan, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Wisconsin), 66 of the 137 sections in the first constitution appear to have been taken from Iowa's constitution and 19 from that of New York.” Falk, Charles J., The Development and Organization of Education in California (New York, 1968), 17; McWilliams, Carey, California: The Great Exception (Santa Barbara, 1979), 43–44; Goodwin, Charles, The Establishment of State Government in California, 1846–1850 (New York, 1914) also notes the other sources, including a provision from Mexican law recognizing a wife's title to property.Google Scholar

4 With the prospect of a precarious fiscal condition in the following years, however, delegates refused to include specific provisions for taxation to help support education. That would come later in 1852 in the form of statutory law. Instead, it was assumed that adequate funding would come from the management and sale of 500,000 acres of federal land that California would acquire once it reached statehood, a grant stipulated by the 1787 Northwest Ordinance, and by subsequent legislation in 1841 to help new states establish governments.Google Scholar

5 As stated at the convention, “Funds accruing from the rents or sale of such lands, or from any other source for the purpose aforesaid, shall be and remain a permanent fund, the interest of which shall be applied to the support of said university … as may be authorized by the terms of [the federal] grant.” Art. 9, sec. 1–4, Constitution of 1849 ; Browne, , Debates, 204–5; see also Goodwin, , Establishment of State Government, 200.Google Scholar

6 In 1864 the legislature formally accepted the federal lands offered by the act, thereby assuming the obligation to sell the land, some 500,000 acres, and establish an institution or institutions that fit the intent of the Act: in short, to provide agricultural, mining, and mechanical education in support of the state economy. As stated by federal law, this needed to be completed by July 1866. The Agricultural College Land Act, 2 July 1862, United States Statutes at Large, art. 8, sec. 4, 503; Gates, Paul W., “California's Agricultural College Lands,” Pacific Historical Review 30 (May 1961): 3.Google Scholar

7 Whitney was a former faculty member at Yale who taught within the institution's tamed Sheffield Scientific School. He advocated this very position three years earlier when he delivered an address honoring the sixth anniversary of the founding of the College of California in Oakland. In contemplating the establishment of a state university, Whitney noted that California should not create “an imitation of an Eastern college … it must be something above the colleges, and supplementary to them, or else there will be a highly injurious rivalry.” Whitney, Josiah Dwight, “An Address Delivered at the Celebration of the Sixth Anniversary of the College of California,” Oakland, 6 June 1861, University of California Archives (henceforth cited as UCA), The Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California.Google Scholar

8 “Report Relative to Establishing a State University: 1864,” in Pamphlets of the University of California, 1861–75, UCA. Developing a polytechnic, in the mold of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, Rensselaer Polytechnic in New York, and the Chandler School of Science at Dartmouth, was in fact the intention of the College of California when in 1863 its board created the “Mining and Agricultural College” in San Francisco. The college was established as a unit of the College of California, with William P. Blacke as director. The new college briefly occupied a building located at 706 Montgomery Street, San Francisco. Many legislators thought that the state of California might simply absorb this new college to form the new state university, or create a similar institution devoid of the classical curriculum. “Announcement of the Mining and Agricultural College, San Francisco, 1863–64,” Dec. 1863, in Pamphlets of the University of California, UCA.Google Scholar

9 “Act to Establish an Agricultural, Mining and Mechanical Arts College,” California Statutes, 31 Mar. 1866; Axt, Richard G., The Federal Government and Financing Higher Education (New York, 1952), 59–65. In the West, many of the relatively new states simply looked for ways to establish several institutions to meet geographical and political needs. “The motive of dividing patronage among communities was strong in the sparsely settled states,” notes a 1933 Carnegie Foundation Study on the relationship of state government and higher education. “The problem of wasteful future duplications received little if any attention in the creation of separate institutions for agriculture and the mechanical arts.” Kelly, Fred J. and McNeely, John J., The State and Higher Education: Phases of Their Relationship (New York, 1933), ix; Brubacher, John S. and Rudy, Willis, Higher Education in Transition: A History of American Colleges and Universities, 1636–1968 (New York, 1968), 64–66; Klein, Arthur J., ed., Survey of Land-Grant Colleges and Universities (Washington, D.C., 1930), 1: 19–22.Google Scholar

10 “To carry out in good faith the provisions of an Act of Congress … for maintaining an Agricultural and Mechanical Arts College,” noted California's legislation, instruction would “embrace the English language and literature, mathematics, civil, military, and mining engineering, agricultural chemistry, mineralogy, metallurgy, animal and vegetable anatomy and physiology, the veterinary art, etymology, geology, technology, political, rural and household economy, horticulture, moral and natural philosophy, history, bookkeeping, and especially the application of science and mechanical arts to practical agriculture in the field and mining.” As quoted in Ferrier, William Warren, Origin and Development of the University of California (Berkeley, 1930), 131; under the act, a Board of Directors would be created, with the chair being Governor Frederick F. Low, and with representatives from the legislature and from the variety of economic interests in the state. Their task was to find a site for the college, appoint additional members to the board, and then organize the college's administrative structure, hire faculty, and assess funding needs.Google Scholar

11 Silliman argued that the strict neoclassical curriculum was on the wane, but urged California to think of more than a technical school. The 1866 bill enacted by the California legislature, he explained, “is far too special and restricted … called forth specially to meet the exigency of securing to the State the benefits arising from the appropriations of [federal] public lands, it appears to have been drawn up somewhat hastily.” A comprehensive curriculum was needed, with the institution organized in a manner that would avoid “the fluctuation of party politics. No merely polytechnic or trade school, no simply professional school, is a University.” Silliman, Benjamin Jr., “The Truly Practical Man, Necessarily an Educated Man: Oration Delivered at the Commencement of the College of California, June 5, 1867,” 18, in Pamphlets on the College of California, UCA; see also Ferrier, William Warren, Henry Durant, First President University of California: The New Englander Who Came to California with College on the Brain (Berkeley, 1942). Regarding the formation of the university, see Stadtman, Verne A., The University of California: 1868–1968 (New York, 1970), 29–30; Silliman, Jr., was the focus of much criticism by Whitney (the result of a soured business venture in Connecticut years before) for what Whitney thought were Silliman's overzealous statements regarding oil exploration in California, and perhaps because of his influence in thwarting the establishment of a polytechnic. See Kuslan, Louis I., “Benjamin Silliman, Jr.: The Second Silliman,” in Benjamin Silliman and His Circle: Studies on the Influence of Benjamin Silliman on Science in America , ed. Wilson, Leonard G. (New York, 1979), 159–205.Google Scholar

12 An Act to Create and Organize the University of California, passed 23 Mar. 1868, California Statutes (1867–68), 248; Stadtman, , University of California, 32; Constitution Revision Commission. “Education: Background Study,” 3–7.Google Scholar

13 California Statutes (1867–68), 248. Thus was created a senate structure that eventually would become one of the most powerful tools of shared governance within any university. However, as observed by Fitzgibbon, Russell H., “it did not spring full-fledged into being like Athena from the head of Zeus. It had to learn to crawl before it could stand, to walk before it could run; and for two long decades it seemed confined to a playpen while the administration of the academic establishment was presidentially performed.” Fitzgibbon, Russell H., The Academic Senate of the University of California (Berkeley, 1968), 17.Google Scholar

14 Quoted in Armes, William Dallam, ed., The Autobiography of Joseph LeConte (New York, 1903), 243, 251.Google Scholar

15 Durant's appointment was the culmination of an academic career that began at Yale, and included an arduous trek to California in 1853 where he almost single-handedly established one of the state's first higher education institutions: the College of California. “I came here with college on the brain,” reflected Durant after his retirement, “and opened a college school the next month.” Quoted in Gilman, Daniel C., “How Pioneers Began a College,” Overland Monthly 14 (Mar. 1875): 287.Google Scholar

16 Haight, Henry H., “University of Education: An Address Delivered at Commencement Exercises of the University of the State of California,” 1871, in Pamphlets of the College of California, UCA.Google Scholar

17 Schulte, Gustavus, “A Glance from a German Standpoint at the State University of California,” 1 Jan. 1871, UCA; Governor Haight in his commencement speech, “University Education” (p. 24), noted in 1871 the admission of women “has been settled; and settled wisely, in my judgement.” The governor equated opposition to this policy as outdated and concurring with the mistaken “opinion expressed by a writer in the 13th Century, that the education of females should be confined to learning [how] “to pray to God, to love man, to knit, and to sew.” Google Scholar

18 The Morrill Act stated that its “leading objective” was “to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such a manner as the Legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education in the industrial classes in their several pursuits.” The Agricultural College Land Act, 1862; Bean, Walton, California: An Interpretive History (New York, 1978), 201–2.Google Scholar

19 Memorial of the California State Grange and Mechanics Deliberative Assembly on the State University (Sacramento, 1874), in Pamphlets of the University of California, UCA.Google Scholar

20 Ferrier, . Origin and Development of the University of California, 131.Google Scholar

21 “Professor Swinton's Testimony before the Legislature of California to the Joint Committee on University Affairs” 11 Mar. 1874, in Carr, Ezra S., The University of California and Its Relation to Industrial Education (1874), in Pamphlets on the University of California, UCA, 42, 55.Google Scholar

22 Carr, Ezra S., “Response from the Professor of Agriculture,” in Statements of the Regents of the University of California to the Joint Committee of the Legislature, Mar. 3, 1874 (San Francisco, 1874), 18, UCA.Google Scholar

23 Ferrier, , Origin and Development of the University of California, 131.Google Scholar

24 Memorial of the California State Grange and Mechanics Deliberative Assembly (1874), in Pamphlets on the University of California, UCA, 7–8; Carr, , Relation to Industrial Education ; Stadtman, , University of California, 71–74; Swett, John, Public Education in California: Its Origin and Development with Personal Reminiscences of Half a Century (New York, 1911), 263–64; see also Allen, Charles H., ed., Historical Sketch of the State Normal School at San Jose, California (Sacramento, 1889), 11–13; Cloud, Roy W., Education in California: Leaders, Organizations, and Accomplishments of the First Hundred Years (Stanford, 1952).Google Scholar

25 Memorial of the California State Grange and Mechanics Deliberative Assembly, 7–8; Biennial Report of the Regents of the University of California for the Years 1872–73, (Sacramento, 1873); Swett, , Public Education in California, 263–64.Google Scholar

26 “Professor Swinton's Testimony before the Legislature,” 14.Google Scholar

27 A. Higbie was the chair, and this attempted deal was exposed in Carr's, Relation to Industrial Education, which was issued in reaction to his forced resignation in 1875.Google Scholar

28 Gilman also presented a detailed listing of revenues and debts for the university. This data showed that land-grant proceeds from that sale of regent-managed land per acre was higher than in all but one state, that these proceeds were used for purchasing land and buildings from the College of California, and that the rest was invested in the Bank of California. Interest from this account, the only income that could be used for operating costs under the Morrill Act, largely went to the young agricultural program, with most of it paying Carr's $300 a month salary. Statements of the Regents of the University of California, to the Joint Committee of the Legislature, Mar. 3, 1874, 5, 14–15; Ferrier, , Henry Durant, First President University of California, 98; Stadtman, , University of California, 71–74.Google Scholar

29 Gilman, Daniel C., “The Building of the University: An Inaugural Address,” Oakland, 7 Nov. 1872, UCA.Google Scholar

30 Looking back on his fight with the Grange, in 1906 Gilman noted that California's university “was a state institution, benefited by the so-called agricultural grant, where it was necessary to emphasize the importance of the liberal arts, in a community where the practical arts were sure to take care of themselves.” Gilman, Daniel Coit, The Launching of a University, and Other Papers: A Sheaf of Remembrances (New York, 1906), 327.Google Scholar

31 California Legislature, “Resolution of the Senate and Assembly Inquiring into the Affairs of the University of California,” 3 Mar. 1874, Journals for the Senate and Assembly, Appendix, 1874.Google Scholar

32 Ferrier, , Origin and Development of the University of California, 362; Falk, , Development and Organization of California Education, 32; Franklin, Fabian, The Life of Daniel Coit Gilman (New York, 1910), 160–61.Google Scholar

33 California Assembly, An Act to Reorganize and Simplify the School System and Public Education of the State of California, Bill no. 374, sec. 3, 8 Feb. 1876; “Report of the Senate Special Committee to Whom was Referred Certain Questions Relative to the Regents of the State University,” 6 Mar. 1876.Google Scholar

34 Memorial by the Board of Regents, University of California, “Disastrous Effects of the Passage of the Carpenter Bill, Its Unconstitutionality,” Apr. 1876, UCA.Google Scholar

35 A subsequent report of a senate subcommittee of the legislature did not necessarily back the university's contention that the bill was unconstitutional, but it did disclaim Carpenter's insistence that term limits applied to the regents. Interpreting article 11 of the constitution “is not free from difficulty,” explained the subcommittee, “but from the examination we have been able to make, and the light before us, we believe it does not” apply to the regents. Another version of the bill was offered two years later by Senator N. Greene Curtis which also advocated the establishment of regional institutions using land-grant funds. The Curtis bill, after additional university protests, was eventually withdrawn due to a lack of support. The battle had been fought, and the effort to reorganize the university appeared to be over, at least for the time being. California Assembly, An Act to Reorganize and Simplify the School System and Public Education of the State of California, Bill no. 198, secs. 3, 11, 16 Jan. 1878.Google Scholar

36 Beyond the normal operation of the railroads themselves, notes George Mowry, capturing the imagery of Frank Norris's Octopus, “the long tentacles of the railroad were entwined around many other California resources.” Federal land grants gave the Central Pacific ten million acres of California land. “This and subsequent grants made the company the largest landowner in both California and Nevada.” Mowry, George F., The California Progressives (Berkeley, 1951), 11; Bean, Walton E., “Ideas of Reform in California,” in Essays and Assays: California History Reappraised , ed. Knoles, George H. (San Francisco, 1973), 13–25.Google Scholar

37 George, Henry, “The Kearney Agitation in California,” Popular Science Monthly 17 (Aug. 1880): 10–14.Google Scholar

38 From the Workingmen's party organizing meeting of 5 Oct. 1877, in which Kearney was elected president; Sacramento Bee, 24 Apr. 1878.Google Scholar

39 Starr, Kevin, Americans and the California Dream: 1850–1915 (New York, 1973), 132; Caughey, John W., California (New York, 1940), 442–50.Google Scholar

40 William White in a letter to the Watsonville Pajoronian, quoted in Van Houten, Peter Scott, “The Development of the Constitutional Provisions Pertaining to the University of California in the California Constitutional Convention of 1878–1879” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1973), 13. There was also widespread dissatisfaction with the old constitution's inadequate provisions for representation within the state assembly and senate. “No provision was made for separate senatorial and assembly districts and the members elected at large from the more populous counties controlled the Legislature,” explains historian Paul Mason. There was also a restriction on the number of assembly representatives at forty members, irrespective of California's population. As a result, there were numerous counties with no representation in this house. Mason, Paul, “Constitutional History of California,” in California State Senate, Constitution of the State of California and the United States and Other Documents (Sacramento, 1949), 299; Bancroft, Hubert Howe, History of California (San Francisco, 1884–90), 24: 370–71.Google Scholar

41 Swisher, Carl Brent, Motivation and Political Technique in the California Constitutional Convention: 1878–79 (Claremont, 1930), 6. See Englebert, Ernest A. and Gunnell, John G., State Constitutional Revision in California (Los Angeles, 1961); and Davis, Winfield J., History of Political Conventions in California. 1849–1892 (Sacramento, 1893), 89093, for the process of electing delegates.Google Scholar

42 Kelley, Robert, Battling the Inland Sea: American Political Culture, Public Policy, and the Sacramento Valley, 1850–1986 (Berkeley, 1989), 325.Google Scholar

43 George, , “The Kearney Agitation”; Bancroft, , History of California, 24: 373, 407.Google Scholar

44 Record-Union, 30 Sep. 1878.Google Scholar

45 Swisher, , Motivation and Political Technique, 33–42. Swisher also explains some of the differences between the approach of Grangers and Workingmen delegates: “The farmer delegates distrusted the clannish Kearneyite agitators, much too thoroughly to unite them in any case where the effect of doing so was not perfectly clear. They did not vote for the workingmen's candidate for president. It was the workingmen who finally shifted their votes, and by doing so came near to defeating the conservative candidate. Such a combination revealed possibilities for the future, but there seemed small chance for the framing of a workingmen's constitution.” Google Scholar

46 Ferrier, , Origin and Development of the University of California, 360; Englebert, and Gunnell, , State Constitutional Revision in California, 96.Google Scholar

47 Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of California. 1879 (Sacramento, 1880), 81, 85.Google Scholar

48 “The hardy, practical-minded pioneers that peopled the state,” explains a 1969 legislative study of laws affecting the university, “were much less interested in the life of the mind than they were in developing new techniques for mining and better methods of agricultural production.” Constitution Revision Commission, “Article IX, Education: Background Study,” 8.Google Scholar

49 Debates and Proceedings, 173.Google Scholar

50 Ibid., 1110.Google Scholar

51 Ibid., 437.Google Scholar

52 Ibid., 438.Google Scholar

53 Debates and Proceedings, 1087; Peckham, Howard H., The Making of the University of Michigan, 1817–1967 (Ann Arbor, 1967), 31. As a result of its 1849 constitutional convention, Michigan's University Board of Regents gained the unique responsibility to conduct “the general supervision of the university and the direction and control of all expenditures from the university funds” free of legislative interference.Google Scholar

54 Debates and Proceedings, 1086.Google Scholar

55 Ibid., 1087.Google Scholar

56 Ibid., 1089.Google Scholar

57 One clear exception being a refusal to adopt section seven, which would have established the State Board of Education as a constitutional entity, with two elected members from each congressional district. Any mention at all of the State Board within the Constitution was then dropped in part because of a perhaps misguided desire to avoid an enhancement of its existing power, and thereby disempower local school boards.Google Scholar

58 Ibid., 1113, 1116.Google Scholar

59 Ibid., 1110, 1113.Google Scholar

60 Western Homestead, 20 Jan. 1879.Google Scholar

61 Van Houten, , “The Development of the Constitutional Provisions,” 138.Google Scholar

62 Debates and Proceedings, 1123.Google Scholar

63 Ibid., 1401.Google Scholar

64 Ibid. Google Scholar

65 Ibid., 1476.Google Scholar

66 Ibid.Google Scholar

67 “Memorial to the Late Regent Winans,” Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board of Regents of the University of California (Sacramento, 1887), 7.Google Scholar

68 Van Houten, , “The Development of the Constitutional Provisions,” 166; Stewart, David Barrows, “The Development of Constitutional Provisions Pertaining to Education in California” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley), 138–44; California Constitution (1879), art. 9, sec. 9.Google Scholar

69 Moorehead, Dudley T., “Sectionalism and the California Constitution of 1879,” Pacific Historical Review 12 (Sep. 1943): 292.Google Scholar

70 Van Houten, , “The Development of the Constitutional Provisions,” 166.Google Scholar

71 Constitution Revision Commission, “Article IX, Education: Background Study,” 16–19.Google Scholar

72 Article XVII, section 2, did state that “The holding of large tracts of land, uncultivated and unimproved, by individuals or corporations is against the public interest and should be discouraged.” But it also noted that any future state policies be consistent “with the rights of private property,” a far cry from George's insistence that such land be heavily taxed and given to the masses.Google Scholar

73 The 1879 constitution was passed 77,952 to 67,134, thus winning with 53 percent of the vote. Bean, , California: An Interpretative History, 203. In future years, the vagueness of this document and the compulsion of Californians to place what should be statute into the constitution resulted in numerous amendments that totaled 320 by the 1950s, and innumerable and confusing court decisions. Ibid.; Busterud, John A., “Politics of Constitutional Revision,” in California Politics and Policies , ed. Dvorin, and Misner, , 106–129; Vieg, John A., “A New Design for California Politics,” Western Political Quarterly 13 (Sep. 1960): 40. While the 1879 Constitution had its faults, it also was an influential watershed of populist thought that shaped California's subsequent development. Reflecting the strength of both the labor movement and an angry Grange, it included provisions for an eight-hour working day for all public works projects, reforming the Railroad Commission in an attempt to free it from corporate control, while reorganizing the judiciary system, improving prison regulation and prohibiting prison labor. Increased popular control was a major theme: the Constitution attempted to reduce corporate control of the legislature by making “lobbying” a felony, and included new powers to regulate utilities and tax corporations. Seeing a reduced role for the legislature, the delegates restricted the use of special legislation and the flexibility to spend public funds and sell public lands, a source of corrupt favors. Suffrage was extended to every male twenty-one years or older living in California for one year (with the clear exception of any “native of China,” convicted criminals, lunatics or illiterates), while statewide elections were extended to the offices of Lieutenant Governor, the Secretary of State, Controller, Treasurer Attorney General, and Surveyor General. Swisher, , Motivation and Political Technique, 98; Engelbert, and Gunnell, , State Constitutional Revision in California; Federal Writer's Project, The WPA Guide to California (New York, 1939), 58–59.Google Scholar

74 California Constitution (1879), art. 9, sec. 9.Google Scholar

75 One, the adding of two ex-officio regents in 1918, and a slight change in language that further confirmed the autonomous status of the institution; and two, in 1976 the elimination of representation from the Mechanics Institute and the State Agriculture Commission, the addition of two additional alumni members, a student member, and finally the lowering of regents' terms to twelve years. As noted by Verne Stadtman, under the 1918 legislation, “Article IX, Section 9 of the constitution now makes no reference to earlier legislation |the 1868 Organic Act|,” and also “eliminated the requirement that appointed Regents be confirmed by the state senate.” The Centennial Record of the University of California, 403–4; By-Laws and Standing Orders of the Regents of the University of California, 1965, UCA.Google Scholar

76 Stadtman, , The University of California, 154.Google Scholar

77 With the infusion of federal dollars, the university, following the lead of the University of Wisconsin and other maturing land-grant institutions, sought to bolster the economic development and professional needs of the state. By 1912, agricultural stations in Davis, Riverside, and San Diego provided both research and courses directly serving agriculture. This combination of program development, new funds, and continued ties with California's economic and social elite, elevated the university's political influence considerably. Stadtman, , The University of California, 13–14; State Universities: Legislative Control of a Constitutional Corporation, 55 Mich. Law Review, no. 728, 1957; Brubacher and Rudy (Higher Education in Transition, 66) note that the Hatch Experiment Station Act of 1887 stimulated A. and M. colleges “because it provided a growing body of scientific subject matter which they could teach. The formulation, in the late 1880s, of the Association of Land Grant Colleges stimulated support for their work and mobilized forces in Congress to pass favorable legislation.” Google Scholar

78 Swisher, , Motivation and Political Technique, 98; Debates and Proceedings, 1086–30, 1475.Google Scholar

79 Constitution Revision Commission, “Article IX, Education: Background Study,” 16–19; “The people in the Granger-dominated rural areas figured most prominently in the approval of the constitution by a narrow 11,000 vote margin,” notes Stadtman in The University of California, 83. “The University's protection from ‘pernicious political influence’ was won, therefore, from precisely the sector most responsible for political interference in the preceding tumultuous decade.” Bancroft, , History of California, 24: 400.Google Scholar

80 Napier, , “Origin and Development of the Public High School,” 184; Falk, , The Development and Organization of Education in California, 42, states: “In 1880, most California public schools were elementary schools whose buildings were provided by local districts but whose operational costs were borne in part by state aid. The teachers for these schools, when trained in California, were graduates of the state normal school in San Jose. Public high schools, available for the most part in urban areas only, had begun to operate alongside private academies.” Google Scholar

81 California Constitution (1879), art. 9, sec. 6.Google Scholar

82 The Kalamazoo case handed down by the Supreme Court of Michigan in 1872 recognized the right of a community, and by inference a state, to tax itself to support secondary schools. This provided an important precedent that helped other states to begin funding and expanding high schools; Callahan, Raymond E., An Introduction to Education in American Society: A Text with Readings (New York, 1960), 133; Ferrier, , Origin and Development of the University of California, 374.Google Scholar

83 Ibid.Google Scholar

84 Reid, William T. to the Regents, Annual Report of the President: 1881–82 (Sacramento, 1882), UCA, 14.Google Scholar

85 Quoted in Ferrier, , Origin and Development of the University of California, 376–77.Google Scholar

86 Starr, Kevin, Inventing the Dream: California through the Progressive Era (New York, 1985), 254–55; see also Kelley, , Battling the Inland Sea, 329.Google Scholar

87 Deutsch, Monroe E., Douglass, Aubrey A., and Strayer, George, A Report of the Survey of the Needs of California in Higher Education (Berkeley, 1948), 58; California Postsecondary Education Commission, Planning Our Future (Sacramento, 1989), Report 89–15, 13–16.Google Scholar

88 State Higher Education in California: Report of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Recommendations of the Commission of Seven (Sacramento, 1932), often referred to as the Suzzallo Report after the director of the study, Carnegie Foundation president Henry Suzzallo, urged the regents to absorb the state colleges, and thus create a superboard.Google Scholar

89 Sproul, Robert G., “Certain Aspects of the Junior Colleges,” Junior College Journal (Feb. 1931), 276–77. According to university supporters, only select students should enter four-year institutions—a vision of an elite institution that jibed with other leaders of higher education such as Robert M. Hutchins. In the view of the university, state colleges should then be limited to teacher education, while the junior colleges could provide lower division courses and vocational training beyond the high school.Google Scholar

90 All of these arguments against the creation of a superboard were articulated in response to the 1932 Suzzallo report, and revived in 1959 when the state once again discussed imposition of a centralized governing system. Board of Regents, University of California, Minutes, 13 Sep. 1932; Academic Senate Committee on Educational Policy, “Report on Four Year Teachers Colleges,” 21 Apr. 1933, UCA; Dean McHenry to University of California President Clark Kerr, 12 Apr. 1959, UCA.Google Scholar