THE DANIELS HOTEL, MARION
The first ten years of the institution were marked by a singularly rapid growth, considering the fact that they included the darkest days of the Civil war, when nearly every male student was drawn from the college halls to the service of his country. At the end of the decade the faculty numbered eight professors and instructors, and 375 students were enrolled, fifty-one of whom were in college classes, the largest enrollment of collegiate students in the state, unless at the State University. The assets of the institution amounted to $50,000 in notes and pledges, a campus of fifteen acres, and two brick buildings which compared not unfavorably with other college buildings in the west and with the earlier halls of Harvard.
In a large measure this exceptional growth was due to Elder Bowman, to his initiative and wide and powerful influence. The chief problem then as now was one of sustenance, and as a college beggar Bowman was incomparable. He travelled over the settled portions of the state, winning men to his cause by a singular personal charm, and enticing even out of poverty money, promissory notes at altitudinous rates of interest, farm produce, live stock and poultry, household furniture and jewelry. His barnyard at Mount Vernon was continually stocked with horses, cattle, and chickens—votive offerings to the cause of higher education. A citizen of the town once told me how under some mesmeric influence he bought at high price from Elder Bowman an old book case and coal scuttle, begged somewhere for the school. This prince of college beggars once returned from Dubuque with a silver watch which he had plundered off the person of an eminent minister of that city.
FROM 1863 TO 1910—GROWTH IN RESOURCES
Nothing is so tame as the history of a college once the interesting period of its childhood is over, and the history of Cornell is exceptionally uneventful among colleges. No building has been destroyed by fire or tornado. No famous lawsuit against the school has been defended by some Webster among the alumni. None of the faculty has won notoriety by sensational speech or erratic morals.
The salient feature of the forty-seven years since 1863 is a marvelous growth unparalleled in some respects in the history of education. The campus has been enlarged by addition after addition until now it measures sixty acres, including the larger part of the long hill and wide athletic fields along its northern base. To the two first buildings, still used, one for the chemical, biological and physical laboratories and the other for class rooms and society halls, there have been added South Hall, built in 1873 and now used for the engineering and geological laboratories; the Chapel, completed in 1882, a stately Gothic structure of stone, containing the auditorium, seating about 1,500, a smaller audience room, the museum, and several music rooms; Bowman Hall, built in 1885, as the well appointed home of ninety-two young women; the library dedicated in 1905, the gift of Andrew Carnegie; the alumni gymnasium in Ash Park, built in 1909, a noble structure, one of the largest of the kind in the state, besides several minor buildings used for allied schools and professors's residences.
The material equipment has made a phenomenal growth, until several of the scientific laboratories are reckoned among the best in the Central West, and the library, numbering 35,000 volumes, ranks as third in size among the university and college libraries in the state, and second to but one of the city libraries of Iowa. The museum includes several collections which rank among the largest in the west: the Kendig collection of minerals, the Norton collection of fossils, and the Powers collection in American anthropology.
GROWTH IN ATTENDANCE
From the beginning Cornell has been a relatively large school measured by the number of its students, and its growth the last decades forbids it longer to be called a small college. Indeed, for many years it has maintained its place as the largest denominational college, or among the two or three largest, in the United States west of the Great Lakes, reckoned by the number of students of collegiate rank. The attendance has steadily risen until, in 1909-1910, 741 students were enrolled, 450 of them being in the college of liberal arts. The steady growth in numbers of collegiate students evidences the satisfaction which the school has given to its patrons, and an ever widening influence and power. Moreover, it has increased the efficiency of the school by the inspiration of numbers and the intensity of competition in all departments of college life. By bringing together students from all parts of the state and scores from other states, some with the polish of the city and others with the sturdy strength of the country, it has escaped the narrowness of the provincial and has attained something akin to cosmopolitanism.