Inaugural Address

              INAUGURAL ADDRESS
of Hon. A. S. Welch, President of the Iowa State Agricultural College.
Gentlemen of the Board:--I accept this charter, and the accompaning keys and seal.
I receive them as symbolizing the authority you bestow and the confidence you repose
in me. I thank you, both on my own behalf and that of my associates, for the expres-sions
of regard toward us with wl1ich they ere tendered. I appreciate the greatness of
the trust and the distinction it confers. Beyond question I express the sentiment
of my co-laborers, when I say, in managing the affairs of this important enterprise,
we shall look to you for encouragement and support, and to God for vlisdom. You will
find me always candid in the utterance of my om views, but faithful and earnest in
carrying out yours, when legally expressed; and as I now wil lingly take on myself
the responsibilities of the office of executive in this new enterprise, so v(ill I,
as ~lillingly resign them to anot.l1er whenever it shall appear that s ch action will
best promote its interests and pr ogress.
The opening of a new institution of learni ng in a new State i s an event of no
little significance. It proclaims that the peri od of exclusive oevotion to the &~imal
wants is past, and that the period in which the wants of the intellect successfully
assert their claim to public attention, has begun . The beginnings of these periof s
in the olden time were ~eparated from each other, by the intervention of centuries.
Slo ,.ly, l aboriously, and with many partial relapses, the s avage tribes emerged from
barbarisJ:!, and fused into nations--and nations, when the industry and commerce of
many generations h&d produced comparative wealth and leisure , r ecogni zing tardily their
own intellectual necessities, planted, at last, the rude germs that have since, as
the centuries revolv8d, grmm into the great Universiti as of Europe.
J But mociern science and art have wonderful ly quicken ed , nay, even reversed, the
succession of those typical events which marked, in long interval s , the pr ogress of
,
nations . No longer does l ei:o.rni ng [..wai t the CUlmination of material prosper ity. The
railroad no longer follo .; s, but leads ci vili zution. The shriek of tn,.~ whistle startles
the ' .. Ud bison of the plains. Telegraph wires span the vlilderness. The cottage of the