For the Good of the Farmer: A Biography of John Harrison Skinner, Dean of Purdue Agriculture

INTRODUCTION

Born on an Indiana farm, educated in agriculture, spending his life in the field of agricultural education and research, a farm owner and operator in his own right, he never for one moment lost the viewpoint of the practical farmer.

—Purdue Alumnus, May 1942

IT WAS A DAY LIKE ANY OTHER, except that today the thirty-three-year-old professor was in Agricultural Hall as the first dean for the Purdue University School of Agriculture. As he sat behind the oak desk in 1907, John Harrison Skinner thought about his past for a few moments. He reminisced about managing his father’s grain and livestock farm, the excitement of attending Purdue’s agricultural Winter Short Course in 1893, and how proud he was to be one of only two students to earn a Purdue agriculture degree in 1897. He thought about how lucky he had been to get the job as an agronomy assistant working for one of the school’s first ag professors, William Carroll Latta, before heading off to the University of Illinois for one year as an instructor on livestock.

He was surprised that ten years had already passed since he had earned his diploma. Skinner recalled the long hours he had spent during the past five years building up the animal husbandry program. If he wasn’t busy managing the campus farm, he was doing livestock research. If he wasn’t in the animal pens, he was taking a train heading for some far-off Farmers’ Institute to give a presentation on feeding livestock. There were always numerous invitations to judge hogs, sheep, cattle, and horses at county fairs across Indiana and plans to compete at the annual Chicago International Live Stock Exposition.

If time wasn’t stretched enough with these activities, he still had to teach the livestock classes to the students majoring in agriculture as well as the intensive eight-week Winter Short Courses and a weeklong corn school to farmers. And there were all of the meetings of the Indiana State Board of Agriculture to attend and the many livestock associations that always needed attention with their annual meetings or their legislative agendas.

There was also the endless flow of letters from growers, all with questions that required replies. He was constantly writing up his research in Agricultural Experiment Station bulletins and summarizing the information for the agricultural newspapers. There never seemed to be enough time to get all of the work done during those first years as a faculty member in the School of Agriculture. But through all of the hard work, endless hours, and the trials and tribulations of managing a nascent college livestock program, he had been able to build a rather strong educational and research program at Purdue University. By 1907, he personally—and Purdue’s animal husbandry program slowly—was becoming recognized as noteworthy within the national land-grant university system.

True to form, Dean John Skinner didn’t dwell long on what had been and instead focused on what Purdue agriculture might become in the future. He had always driven himself to look forward, to answer the what-if questions posed to him from the agricultural community. He was now charged by Purdue’s President Winthrop Stone and the university’s board of trustees to focus the same intensity that he had given to the animal science program to moving the School of Agriculture to a more prominent position within the university and a more recognizable one across Indiana. In order to do that, he would need to gain the confidence of the state’s growers and convince them that an agricultural education was a great value so they would willingly send their children to Purdue to pursue an agriculture degree.

Skinner could hear the students talking as they walked down the hall next to his office. Always the pragmatic researcher, Skinner the teacher and now the chief administrator for the School of Agriculture understood that his graduating students needed more than just a piece of paper announcing their successful completion of the agriculture program. If he had anything to do with it, Purdue graduates would have the skills and knowledge that they could immediately put to use on their farms, in business, or while pursing university work. And so his first day as dean was followed by thirty-two years of service as he guided the agricultural programs at Purdue University.

What Dean John Harrison Skinner did not know that day in 1907 was that his leadership responsibilities would be much larger than just being in charge of the teaching faculty and the students they turned out. Eventually, he would also be given the titles of director of the Indiana Agricultural Experiment Station at Purdue and director of the Department of Agricultural Extension. In essence, he became the dean of teaching, research, and extension, which meant that he had the position and power to transform how Purdue agricultural programs would influence and impact Indiana’s agricultural industry for decades to come.

It’s true that during his forty-year tenure at Purdue University, he would make his mark as someone who was instrumental in significantly increasing the number of students and faculty as well as the number of agricultural subjects taught to students, emphasizing a specialized college degree in place of the general one, constructing buildings for the ag school, and enlarging the number of acres of Purdue-owned farmland.

What might be lost in recounting Skinner’s accomplishments is that he never swayed from his personal mission—whether as a student, assistant, teacher, professor, or administrator—that Purdue agriculture was there to assist the farmer. Throughout his career, he remained true to a personal philosophy that what was good for Indiana agriculture and the state’s farmers was good for Purdue University. This guiding principle that Skinner instilled in the School of Agriculture during the first half of the twentieth century is the legacy that still manifests itself today within the modern-day Purdue College of Agriculture.

PART ONE

Purdue University and John Harrison Skinner:

The Institution and the Individual

A photograph from 1894 showing the Purdue University farm buildings. The road pictured in the foreground would be State Road 26. The Purdue campus farm was located in the area occupied today by Lilly Hall and Discovery Park. John Skinner spent much time here, first during the Winter Short Course in 1893, again as an undergraduate from 1893 to 1897, and later as farm manager.

Courtesy of Purdue University Libraries, Karnes Archives and Special Collections.

The Evolution of Indiana’s Cow College

TO COMPREHEND THE INFLUENCE THAT JOHN H. SKINNER had on Purdue University requires some understanding of why agricultural universities were created in the first place. This provides the context for why men like John Skinner held dearly to their beliefs that a college education be available to all, that science underpinned a farmer’s profitability, and that students graduating from Purdue University be able work with their hands and their minds.

One can trace the history of Purdue University by focusing on the original 100 acres of ground located just west of and uphill from Lafayette, Indiana, and the Wabash River. That this specific piece of high ground overlooking the Tippecanoe County courthouse was selected for the university is rich in Indiana lore and legend—and twisted and tangled in state and federal politics. Even the name change from Indiana Agricultural College to Purdue University is a testimony to a Lafayette merchant’s determination that a college would carry his name in perpetuity.

Purdue University credits its existence today to an idea conceived, shaped, and shepherded into federal legislation by Justin Morrill, a Vermont congressman. While he himself had little formal education, this lifelong politician understood the importance of a college education. He knew that children from families of wealth and influence went to expensive and prestigious private universities. After graduation, they often returned to manage the family business or followed in their families’ footsteps by serving as politicians, ambassadors, or military officers.

Morrill had little argument with those of wealth and influence. He himself had risen to such a position in his own life. What Morrill really wanted was a college system that accommodated the educational needs of students whose parents provided the labor in the workplace. It was clear to him that if these children were to do better than their own parents, then they needed a college education that was available, accessible, and affordable. And he understood that this education would need to blend technical knowledge with practical training in order for these students to be personally and professionally successful.

After repeated attempts, Justin Morrill got the United States Congress to pass his education bill and convinced President Abraham Lincoln to sign it into federal law. The Morrill Act of 1862 enabled each state to establish a new university that would become part of a nationwide network of applied universities known then, and even today, as the land-grant university system. The land-grant tag stemmed from Congressman Morrill’s rather unique and, some argued at the time, controversial funding mechanism. Morrill wanted the sale of surplus, federally owned lands in the Midwest and far west to subsidize the creation of these colleges.

The federal government, under the auspices of the Morrill Act, transferred nearly 17 million acres of federally owned land to the states. This prompted a public fire sale of land, which raised $7 million of seed money to help jump-start the creation of the land-grant college system.

It is important to note that during this same timeframe, Congress established the United States Department of Agriculture, which created a federal cabinet to focus on agricultural production. The legislators also passed the Homestead Act, allowing for the expansion of agriculture in the West. Creating this federal office to guard and promote agricultural interests, opening up the western lands for farming, and establishing colleges of agriculture all converged to build up rural America and launch the agricultural middle class in the United States.

Today, the Morrill Act of 1862 is considered a landmark piece of educational legislation. Probably no one, including Justin Morrill, could have foreseen the impact that this rather simple, two-page law would have on providing a college education to millions of students. The land-grant college system is a living legacy to Morrill, who championed its cause. And it is a credit to President Abraham Lincoln and the members of the Thirty-seventh Congress, who looked beyond the Civil War for the need of the nation to educate its young students.

Once Congress passed the Morrill Act, each state had to decide whether or not to accept Congress’s financial support for establishing an agricultural and engineering college within its boundaries. The legislation mandated that states would have to qualify for their share of land scrip by agreeing to a series of deadlines and requirements.

Each state’s general assembly was given three years from July 2, 1862, to agree to the terms of the federal legislation. On March 6, 1865, the Indiana General Assembly agreed to abide by the mandates. If only the state legislators had known how difficult it would be to reach consensus and meet the federal requirements for building their agricultural and engineering college, they might have spared themselves the agony by voting against the measure.

After incorporating as the Indiana Agricultural College, the first trustees—with no college, land, buildings, professors, or students—had to sell the 390,000 acres of federal land scrip in Nebraska allocated to Indiana. They eventually sold the entire allotment to the five highest bidders for an average of 54 cents per acre, netting $212,238. However, none of this could be spent on buildings—yet another stipulation by the federal government. This meant that the Indiana General Assembly would have to provide additional funds to erect the university’s first buildings.

With the money for the land sale safely deposited in the bank, the Indiana General Assembly now faced yet another deadline, this one requiring a decision about where to place the school. The state legislators seemed unprepared to deal with the political pressure and conflicting advice that this decision would prompt. With so many competing opinions from around the state, the decision on where to place the new Indiana Agricultural College would happen, but not until the federally mandated deadline of January 1, 1870, was looming.

And the person who would tip the decision was none other than John Purdue, a sixty-seven-year-old merchant from Tippecanoe County. As the Indiana General Assembly neared the end of its term on March 2, 1869, Senator John A. Stein read in the Senate chamber a letter from Purdue offering $100,000 of his own money to what the Tippecanoe County contingent had already proposed, providing the school was built at the small town of Battle Ground in Tippecanoe County. His other condition, which undoubtedly irked many senators, was that the college name include Purdue somewhere in its title. But John Purdue had waited too long. The legislative session ended without any resolution on where the university would be built.

Indiana Governor Conrad Baker called a special legislative session on April 8, 1869, to deal with the unresolved issue of where to locate Indiana’s land-grant school. The luxury of the five years’ time allotted by the federal government for the decision had been argued and frittered away. It was time to act.

Once again, John Purdue made his wishes known as he re-entered the fray over where to place the school. His second proposal was modified to address what he, Senator Stein, and others must have discussed during the intervening weeks between sessions. The merchant from Tippecanoe County sweetened his first proposal by offering $150,000. He also offered to donate 100 acres of land for a campus and a farm. He relented somewhat on his first proposal by saying the school could be located anywhere in Tippecanoe County, but he remained firm in his request that the university carry his name in perpetuity and that he be appointed as a life member to its board of trustees.

John Purdue got his wish in May 1869, when both the Indiana House and Senate voted to accept his proposal. Purdue University—and not the Indiana Agricultural College—would become Indiana’s land-grant university.

John Purdue searched the county from one end to the other and eventually purchased 100 acres of land west of the city of Lafayette, the county seat of Tippecanoe County. Lafayette—with its hotels, railroads, and bustling commerce—provided the amenities, goods, and services that a university would need in order to carry out its educational mission.

Indiana’s legislators accepted the donated land, bringing to a close a long, hard-fought, and contentious debate on the university’s location. John Purdue deeded the 100 acres to the university trustees on December 22, 1869. In April 1872, he provided an additional eighty-four acres to the university. This second parcel, situated just north of the original acreage, would be the site of the first buildings, as Indiana became the twenty-first state to accept the Morrill Act, the twenty-fourth to pick the university’s site, and the thirteenth to offer classes to its students.

As the trustees began working to establish the new university, the original 100 acres would become the agriculture campus, with the Purdue farm carved out of the western section. This would be where John Skinner himself would eventually attend his classes and work the fields as a student, teacher, researcher, and administrator.

The Purdue University Board of Trustees met for the first time on May 25, 1869, at the Lahr Hotel in Lafayette, Indiana, where John Purdue was officially sworn in and made a member of the board for life. The trustees listened to Professor John S. Hougham, Purdue’s first faculty member, discuss scheduling the first classes, which would be held from March 2 to June 12 of 1874, to meet a state requirement. The university would officially open its doors in September 1874 with four schools and only six teachers.

None of the instructors was trained to teach agriculture, horticulture, or veterinary courses. As John Skinner would later observe, It was significant that when instruction really started the men who first applied for it had not lived on farms. They were city men with an academic approach to the problems of the farm.¹ With so little to offer, not a single student would enroll in the School of Agriculture until 1879, five years after the first classes began.² In the earlier years, there was a general conviction among farmers that a ‘dirt’ farmer learned his trade at home, with no need of fads and fancies and the frills of educators, noted Skinner.³ It was a conviction that would take Purdue agriculture professors a quarter century to overcome.

Purdue President Emerson E. White, who led the university from 1876 to 1883, thought a more practical agricultural curriculum might turn around the lack of interest by the state’s growers. He became a strong advocate of practical experience in farming operations—a recommendation evidently needed, for a Japanese student who sought admission to the school withdrew on learning that farm practice was not offered.⁴ In an effort to entice students into the agriculture program, White reorganized the university in 1876, creating the University Academy, the College of General Science, and six Special Schools of Science and Technology. One of the special schools was Agriculture and Horticulture. He believed that the theory and science which formed the basis of agriculture and horticulture could be taught by the current professors, but he questioned whether the details of farming by actual practice could be implemented in a way that would appeal to students and their parents.⁵

White set aside ten acres on the campus farm for conducting agricultural experiments. He wanted to turn the rest of the hundred or so acres into a model farm where the university could show farmers how science could be applied to farming in a profitable way. And if it were managed as a commercial farm, it might just be possible to generate enough income to pay the salary of an experienced professor to teach the agricultural courses and conduct important agricultural experiments.

In 1878 White set out to hire a professor of agriculture who could teach classes and conduct research while managing the university farm.⁶ White knew that if Purdue were going to have only one professor of agriculture, then the one selected for that assignment had to be special. A wrong move in hiring only meant the agriculture program would continue to falter.

But White was fortunate in that he was looking at the right time. Michigan Agricultural College had decided to reduce the salaries of their professors and to eliminate the funds committed to supporting agricultural experiments. As White cast about for his ag professor, he found that Michigan professor Charles L. Ingersoll was more than happy to become the first professor of agriculture and horticulture at Purdue University in 1879.

Ingersoll’s appointment had an immediate effect. Enrollment in Purdue’s Special School of Agriculture and Horticulture jumped from zero to eleven students in his first year.⁷ At the June 1881 graduation ceremonies, Professor Ingersoll would see the first four agriculture students graduate. Three earned bachelor’s of science degrees for having completed their program in the College of General Science with an emphasis in agriculture, while one student received a diploma for completing the three-year agriculture program through the Special Schools of Science and Technology.

To White’s displeasure, Ingersoll left after three years to become the president of Colorado Agricultural College. To fill the vacant position, White returned once again to Michigan Agricultural College, where he was able to hire William Carroll Latta, who had just earned his master’s degree. Latta, a native Hoosier from Ligonier, Indiana, accepted White’s offer to become the second professor of agriculture and horticulture at Purdue in August 1882.

Within his first years, Latta changed the agricultural curriculum. Mathematics past the sophomore year was dropped, while English, meteorology, entomology, and agricultural chemistry were added to the coursework. The school catalog began to describe courses on farm implements, floriculture, dairying, crops, livestock, and livestock breeding.

By allowing students to take agricultural classes earlier on, Latta made an important strategic change. Under the previous policy, it seemed that his ag students were dropping out of school before they even had a chance to focus on what they really wanted to study. Following the change, freshmen and sophomores would no longer spend their first two years on the north campus taking all courses except those in agriculture. Latta noted that giving the underclassmen opportunities to take ag classes would keep the student constantly in close sympathy with agricultural pursuits.⁸

As the lone agriculture professor during the early years at Purdue, Professor Latta taught all eight classes that fell in agriculture and horticulture, and for good measure, ran the farm and conducted the experimental work beside.⁹ In the fall of 1884, however, Latta welcomed Professor James Troop, yet another Michigan Agricultural College graduate, as the professor of horticulture and entomology. Both Latta and Troop would spend their entire professional careers at Purdue University.

In 1889, the Indiana Agricultural Experiment Station, with its dedicated federal funds, was established at Purdue as a separate but equal administrative unit from the agriculture school. Soon experiments began in earnest, and the results began to be published as Agricultural Experiment Station bulletins and summarized in newspapers. The scientific studies, their findings, and recommendations generated much interest across the state.¹⁰

While things were looking up for the agriculture program, the number of students enrolled in agriculture continued to disappoint and discourage the administrators and trustees of Purdue. Even President James H. Smart (1883–1900) in his fifteenth annual report could only say farmers themselves are not yet alive to the necessity for giving their sons, who expect to remain on the farm, a liberal education.¹¹ Yet, by 1891–92, the School of Agriculture enrollment moved in the right direction when eighty-five students registered for agriculture and horticulture classes.¹² While the numbers showed impressive growth for the School of Agriculture, these numbers were still embarrassing low compared to the rapidly growing engineering programs offered across campus.

Purdue University opened its doors to its first students in 1874—the same year in which John Skinner was born. It would take another nineteen years for Skinner to enroll as a student in the university’s agricultural classes, but taking that step in 1893 would mark the beginning of what would be a long-standing commitment between John Harrison Skinner and Purdue University.

John Skinner’s graduation photograph from 1897, when he earned one of the first bachelor of science in agriculture degrees from Purdue University.

Courtesy of Nancy Skinner Giddens.

The Farmer Earns an Agricultural Degree

JOHN HARRISON SKINNER BEGAN HIS LIFE on March 10, 1874, in Romney, Indiana, a small rural town located a dozen or so miles south of the Purdue University West Lafayette campus. His father, William Harrison Skinner (1839–1923), was the son of a blacksmith and wagon maker. He grew up in Brookville, Indiana, and like most men of his generation and place, left to serve as a Union soldier. After spending three grueling years in the Thirty-seventh Indiana Infantry, William Skinner packed his belongings in a wagon and headed north to farm in Tippecanoe County.¹ There he met Mary Alexander (1848–1935), a Tennessean by birth. After a short courtship, the couple married on January 10, 1867, in Lafayette, Indiana.

Over the years, William and Mary would see five children born at their Romney farm, the eldest of whom was John. Young Skinner learned reading, writing, and arithmetic in nearby township schools, but like most other farm boys from the area, John was immersed in farming at an early age. His family worked a typical midwestern farm consisting of 240 acres of cropland, pastures, and woods. There he learned how to grow corn, oats, wheat, and hay. His daily chores included caring for a small menagerie of hogs, horses, and cattle. As John grew, his father’s farm provided him with a living laboratory where he could learn the science of agriculture and practice the art of farming.² These were lessons John never forgot.

William Skinner was active in his community’s agricultural affairs and played a small role in the Farmers’ Institutes, which were agricultural meetings held annually in the county and around the state.³ These local meetings— forerunners to the Cooperative Extension Service—featured professors from Purdue and successful farmers who came to share the latest agricultural practices with local farmers. The institutes, which focused on subjects important to the well-being of growers and their families, became social events that allowed neighbors from remote farms to visit with friends they seldom saw during the year.

Posters around town advertised the date, location, speakers, topics, and entertainment for each event. And as long as the dirt roads were firm and passable, buggies brought families from miles around to listen, learn, and visit. In good weather, the institutes were often standing room only as attendees jockeyed for seats to hear the program speakers. Farmers’ Institutes, which began in 1889 in Indiana, would remain a popular fixture in the state’s farming communities for fifty years.

One can only imagine what the impressionable fifteen-year-old John Skinner thought as he attended these local meetings with his father, listening to other farmers talk about their agricultural practices. These speakers were not just average farmers; they were men and women handpicked by Purdue Professor of Agriculture William C. Latta to preach agricultural reform. Latta selected speakers who were eminent grain farmers, horticulturists, livestock breeders, and homemakers from around the state. These Purdue-sponsored speakers would then share their experiences, successes, and even setbacks with their colleagues who attended the county institutes. They often interjected into their speeches the importance of growers using agricultural science to improve all aspects of the farm and home. At times, they even discussed how an agricultural education from Purdue University would secure a better future for farmers and their children.

Already a farmer with practical experience, Skinner listened intently to the speakers’ advice, but there was one lesson in particular that he committed to long-term memory: Growers could earn more from their farms if they injected proven scientific information into their operations. By adding science to what they had learned from their fathers and grandfathers, farmers could make their farms more profitable and less likely to fail. And Skinner must have been especially impressed when the speakers translated changes from one agricultural practice to another into dollars and cents. He realized that he and the other growers took more notice when the information was presented in this manner. It would be yet another lesson learned at Farmers’ Institutes that Skinner would put to great use during his professional career.

Like so many young adults before him, Skinner could have been content to farm with his parents or to buy his own farm, just as his father had done after the war. But instead, a Purdue-sponsored educational event in 1893 fundamentally altered his future as a practicing farmer. Skinner was nineteen when he decided to attend Purdue’s Winter Short Courses, intensive agricultural classes designed for farmers like him who had no intention of pursuing a college education or could not afford one. Professor William Latta, who had also established Indiana’s Farmers’ Institutes, was instrumental in starting the Winter Short Courses in 1888.

Although the number of livestock on the Skinner farm was meager, to say the least, Skinner had developed an interest in livestock production nonetheless. And so it was that he registered for the course called Live Stock Husbandry and Dairying held from January 10 to March 3, 1893, at Purdue’s West Lafayette campus. He paid fifteen dollars for tuition, textbooks, and laboratory fees, plus an additional forty dollars for room and board during the eight-week course.⁴ Skinner was one of twenty-eight Indiana students enrolled in the livestock course that year, and while he may not have realized it then, his future as a fulltime farmer would change within the year due largely to this experience.⁵

The winter course students—appropriately nicknamed shorthorns— were soon immersed in intensive hands-on work. Students attended classes, completed homework assignments, took examinations, and judged livestock breeds under the instruction of Professor Charles S. Plumb, the university’s point man on livestock, and others. In all, Skinner would listen to fifty lectures by professors connected with the university, and special lectures on horses, cattle, sheep, swine, and poultry, by prominent breeders and specialists.⁶

From Monday through Friday, Skinner and his fellow students attended classes in the original Agricultural Experiment Station Building, a rather rundown location on the south side of the campus where a handful of professors taught and conducted research. When class was over, the students would walk west to the campus farm and work with livestock there, applying what they had just learned in class. The lecturers for the day may have described the ideal features of Hereford beef cattle or Duroc hogs, but it was another matter for the students to use that information to select the best purebreds from a pen of animals, each superficially resembling the other. Learning how to select the best breeding stock for their farms would prove to be a critical skill for these agriculture students.

At the conclusion of the course, Skinner and his classmates took a field trip by train to visit midwestern livestock operations.⁷ Professor Plumb thought the students could enhance their education by visiting the University of Wisconsin’s Animal Husbandry Department, with stops along the way to review commercial livestock farms managed by well-known stockmen in Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin.⁸ This trip was the first of its kind offered by Purdue, and more than likely, it was the first time that Skinner and the other nine students had traveled outside of Indiana.⁹

Professor Latta documented the students’ departure, writing, The first annual agricultural short course excursion, personally conducted for purposes of instruction by Director Plumb, of Purdue, left for Fowler at 9:39 this [Saturday] morning [March 4, 1893]. It consisted of F. B. Alexander, Charles Anderson, J. D. Armantrout, H. C. Beckman, Jr., Walter Binford, Benjamin Kesler, John L. Milbourn, E. J. Ralston, H. L. Rauch and J. H. Skinner.¹⁰ Plumb also wrote about the trip:

On Saturday morning, [March 4, 1893], a party of twelve, composed mainly of Short Course students, started out on a sight-seeing expedition, under the personal surveillance of Professor [C. S.] Plumb. The party took the 9:30 train on the Big 4, for Fowler, where the Hickory Grove stock farm is located. They were warmly received by Wm. S. Van Natta, proprietor of Hickory Grove, and were immediately taken out to inspect one of the finest herds of Hereford cattle in the United States. Hickory Grove has 125 head of Herefords. Among the noted animals were Star Grove 3d, Fowler and Cherry Boy.

The next visit was paid to the World’s Fair grounds at Chicago, Sunday morning…. In the extreme southern end of the grounds are two small herds of cattle, small, yet worth going miles to see. They are the flower of the dairy breed of America. There are ninety-six Jerseys and twenty-six Guernseys here to become acclimated, in order that they may compete for the prizes in the best possible condition… .

The next visit was paid to the Oaklawn Horse Farm, the largest of its kind in the world. After a bounteous repast had been served and cigars passed around (FREE), Mr. Dunham exhibited his Percherons and French coach horses, the latter were the general favorites and well they might be, for picture, a high spirited, rangy, clean-limbed horse, with finely arched neck, just the horse you would like to call your own… .

The stables of Galbraith Bros., Bowles, Scott & Co., and Reid Bros., at Janesville, Wis., were the next which were visited. The horses found here were also of the best.

At 10 P.M. the party arrived at Madison. Here it was the same old story, welcome, welcome, and the reception prepared for them would have done honor to a lord, but, unfortunately owing to a missed train, the [Purdue] party were twelve hours late, and so missed the best part of the program, a banquet, with ex-Governor Hoard and several other dignitaries of the Badger State.¹¹

If the professor expressed such obvious satisfaction with the sights of the trip, one can only imagine what they must have meant to the students who accompanied him.

At the conclusion of the 1893 Winter Short Course, the students with the best grades and those who excelled at judging were formally recognized by Purdue University. Professor Latta spoke encouraging words in his congratulatory speech to the students, saying, They will go out from Purdue as friends of the institution and it is confidently believed that they will seek to apply the lessons learned here to their work on the farm.¹² Though Skinner would not win a prize that March, he would distinguish himself only a few years later when he replaced Charles Plumb as the livestock professor at Purdue University.

Back on the farm, Skinner prepared for spring planting. As he worked, he thought about what he had learned in the Purdue Winter Short Course. While it had been exciting and thought-provoking, he knew that he had just skimmed the surface of livestock breeding, feeding, and management. He wanted to know more and so became convinced that he had to study agriculture as a full-time student at Purdue. His freshman year would cost eighty dollars for tuition, room, and board.¹³ Since this was a rather sizable amount of money for a young farmer, it is likely that his parents helped cover some of the cost.

And so it was that the young man filled out his college enrollment application for the fall of 1893.¹⁴ Purdue University required Skinner to successfully meet three requirements in order to be accepted into the agriculture program. First, the applicant had to be at least sixteen years old, which Skinner clearly was. Second, references about one’s character had to accompany the application. No doubt Skinner had his neighbors write letters of support on his behalf.

Finally, the applicant either needed to have completed coursework at a state-commissioned high school or pass a qualifying entrance examination that covered English, math, history, and geography.¹⁵ It is unlikely that Skinner graduated from high school because, while many of his contemporary colleagues mentioned this accomplishment, Skinner’s records show no indication of this.

Even if he had finished high school, the Purdue catalogs do not list a Romney High School as one commissioned by the state. Thus, Skinner probably passed Purdue’s entrance examination in order to gain his acceptance to the university.

As he stepped off the train at the Lafayette depot in early September 1893, Skinner was met by older students from Purdue who helped him and others get to campus. The prospective students boarded a waiting streetcar and, within minutes, were on campus. Getting to Purdue was easy compared to getting registered for classes. Once on campus, he was directed to the president’s office, where he filled out a matriculation (enrollment) card and signed the university’s register. Once completed, the clerk handed Skinner a card that he carried next door to the office of the board of trustees. There the secretary collected the fees owed to the university and handed Skinner yet another card, the entrance card. This was the official card indicating Skinner was a legitimate student at Purdue. He would have to show this card to every professor at the beginning of the first meeting of each class.¹⁶

For the first two years, he lived on North Grant Street near campus, while his junior and senior years were spent at 35 Oregon Street in Lafayette.¹⁷

Engineering was the curriculum of choice for most students during Skinner’s time at Purdue. He was only one of eight students enrolled in the agricultural curriculum during his freshman year. By his junior year in 1885, though, the program had expanded to fifteen students.¹⁸

In theory, the School of Agriculture was divided into five subsections: practice of agriculture, horticulture, entomology, agricultural chemistry, and veterinary science.¹⁹ The 1893 catalog stated, This course of instruction is intended to give students a thorough training in the approved principles and practices of agriculture. This is accomplished by means of practice in the chemical, botanical, biological and dairy laboratories on the farm proper, and by lectures and text books.²⁰ But in practice, the education Skinner received was basically identical to that of every other ag major, with few electives or options.²¹

Skinner took his instruction from professors who are remembered as early pioneers in agricultural education in the annals of Purdue history and who made their mark on Indiana agriculture. These men and the classes they taught included:

• Charles S. Plumb, Professor of Animal Industry and Dairying: Live Stock Husbandry, Dairying, Stock Feeding.

• William C. Latta, Professor of Agriculture: General Agriculture, Farm Buildings and Farm Implements, Farm Economy, Farm Drainage, Agricultural Experimentation.

• James Troop, Professor of Horticulture and Entomology: Economic Entomology, Horticulture and Economic Botany, Rural Law, Landscape Gardening, Forestry.

• Arvill W. Bitting, Professor of Veterinary Science: Veterinary Anatomy, Veterinary Medicines, Veterinary Science, Veterinary Obstetrics.

• Henry A. Huston, Professor of Agricultural Chemistry: Agricultural Chemistry.

• Stanley Coulter, Professor of Biology: Botany.

While Skinner’s professors were impressive, the building where he took his ag classes was not, being nothing more than a dilapidated two-story structure. It was, in fact, the same building where Skinner had previously attended the Winter Short Course. It stood in the open area just north of where the Agricultural Administration Building stands today. This ag building housed the professors from the School of Agriculture and the researchers from the Agricultural Experiment Station.²² Outside of farm buildings, it was the only building on the ag campus. The professors, researchers, and administrators would have to wait until 1902 for their first new building on the ag side of campus.

In addition to classroom lectures, the professors also provided instruction at the campus farm, where students would spend their laboratory time putting theory into practice.²³ Skinner would see experiments on cultivation, tillage, fertilization, crop rotations, and livestock feeding there.²⁴ Whether judging purebred livestock or learning how to use the latest farm implement, the students spent hours each week doing their class practical.

The farm, and especially the livestock, did little to impress Skinner. While the school catalog portrayed the campus farm as modern, Skinner saw it for what it really was: neglected. From his vantage point, the farm’s livestock consisted of too few animals and cattle past their prime, with many important breeds missing.

As Skinner adapted to the life of a student, he had to meet some expectations, including that it was a custom to touch your hat to all professors. It is not a rule, but only a mark of respect.²⁵ A more important expectation was that students had to attend classes, with absences being duly noted by the professor. Skinner knew what he had to do if he missed class.

Any student absenting himself from a recitation without previously obtaining permission of the Professor, must obtain an excuse for such absence from the President [of Purdue]. The first step is to go to the Librarian’s desk and ask for an excuse blank. This must be filled out with the proper dates, number of hours absent, names of studies missed, cause of absence, and the full name signed. It is then dropped in the box labeled Excuses which is placed between the two library rooms. The excuse being deposited one day may be obtained again on the day following, and must be shown to the various Professors in charge of the classes in which the absences occurred. If the excuse is put in the box early on one day it may be found after 2:30 on the day following.²⁶

Skinner was a bright student who seriously pursued his studies.²⁷ The only exception to his perfect grades in his major was a B he received in his agriculture class taught by Professor Latta.²⁸ Skinner would rise to the challenge by making top grades in the remainder of his agricultural classes, though.

As a freshman, Skinner helped organize the Purdue Farm Club, an organization formed for the purpose of studying and discussing the great agricultural problems of the day; and for the interchange of ideas relative to Agriculture, thereby better fitting ourselves to lead a useful and prosperous life.²⁹ The group, which changed its name to the Agricultural Society in 1897, met in the recitation room of the agricultural building. Infrequently, they were invited to meet at the home of an ag professor. The members conducted normal club activities, such as electing officers, approving past minutes, and updating the constitution. Skinner was never elected as an officer of the Purdue Farm Club but seemed to take an active role in writing the club’s constitution.

Sometimes Professor William Latta and Professor James Troop delivered an evening lecture to the group, and on at least one occasion, Purdue University President James Smart addressed the club. Members also heard lectures by their fellow members. Skinner participated by reading an untitled paper at the January 4, 1894, meeting. Two months later, he gave a presentation on what it took to give an impromptu speech. In April 1894, he read a paper called Vet Science as Related to Farming. And he and another student, Charles Davis, spoke on The Care of Breeding Animals at the January 16, 1896, meeting. No doubt, his selection of topics reflected his continuing and growing interests in livestock.

But it was the debates between members of the Purdue Farm Club that highlighted most meetings. The questions at hand were an interesting mix of issues being discussed inside and outside of the university setting. One or two students would take the affirmative side, with an equal number taking the negative side. A three-student judges’ panel declared the winner based on the side that presented the best arguments.

Skinner had the opportunity during his undergraduate years to hear the following issues debated:

• Resolved that the agricultural colleges should give more practical instruction (Jan. 4, 1894)

• Resolved that it would be more profitable to make a specialty of live stock, than the growing of cereals (Jan. 17, 1894)

• Resolved that it is profitable and humane to dehorn cattle (Jan. 24, 1894)

• Resolved that the agricultural [news]papers are exerting a greater influence to raise the standard of the farmer, than the Government headed by the Secretary of Agriculture (Jan. 31, 1894) [Skinner took the negative side in this debate.]

• Resolved that it would be beneficial to have an Agric[ulture] course for young ladies in our Agr[icultural] Colleges (Feb. 21, 1894)

• Resolved that it would be more profitable and reach more farmers’ sons to shorten the regular four year course to two year only to include agricultural subjects (Mar. 14, 1894)

• Resolved that the Regular Course in Agriculture should be divide into separate divisions, such as Veterinary, Dairying, Agriculture, etc. which shall be made elective (Nov. 12, 1894)

• Resolved that it would be more beneficial and profitable for farmers to sell their live stock and grain direct to the butcher and grain dealer (Jan. 15, 1895)

• Resolved that the progress of civilization is due to the development of agriculture (Feb. 15, 1896)

• Resolved that a young man cannot afford to spend four years of the best of his life in acquiring an agricultural collegiate education (Mar. 7, 1896)

• Resolved that the horse is of more value than the cow (Mar. 12, 1896)

• Resolved that silage is a less profitable food than is either cut or shredded corn (Nov. 10, 1896)

• Resolved that money spent for acquiring knowledge is a better investment than when spent on [ sic ] any other way (Mar. 22, 1897) ³⁰

Graduating with a bachelor’s degree from Purdue University meant more than excelling in one’s classes and satisfactorily completing laboratory assignments. In addition to coursework, each student had to complete a senior research thesis.³¹ The student selected the topic, then performed the work under the direction of the professor in charge of that area.³² When completed, the professor had to approve the experimental approach, the analysis of the results, and the student’s in-depth knowledge of what he had done.

These experiments were more than busy work. An undergraduate’s work could have serious implications for growers. For example, in 1904 J. G. Gentry, a senior agriculture student, had his work published in The Farmer’s Guide, where it was noted that: He has demonstrated the value of the balanced ration as compared with corn. The balanced rations were compounded from a variety of feeds and were very much superior to corn alone.³³

At the start of his senior year in 1896, Skinner spent hours each week conducting his thesis research. His topic, The Sanitary Condition of Water for Live Stock, was thesis number 563 cataloged by the university. It is likely that Professor Charles S. Plumb would have reviewed, approved, and signed off on Skinner’s research work, though this cannot be verified since—as a university librarian noted on December 9, 1910—Skinner’s thesis was lost.

Skinner had military responsibilities as an active member of the Purdue military corps. Freshman and sophomore students were required to undergo military drill as part of their education.³⁴ Skinner enjoyed his experience serving as a cadet in the Infantry Division during his four years as an undergraduate student. He would rise to the rank of first lieutenant in Company C in 1895 and make captain of Company D in 1896. For his work as a cadet, Skinner received a military diploma in May 1897.³⁵

Skinner and his close friend, David Clarence Pfendler from Moral, Indiana, were the only two students to receive their bachelor of science in agriculture degrees on June 9, 1897, at commencement exercises. And the two men would be among the first dozen students to receive this degree with the agriculture designation. Prior to 1895, a student completing coursework in agriculture would have graduated with a bachelor of science degree. The change marked an important milestone for Purdue agriculture, giving the school a sense of recognition and separation within the university.³⁶

With diploma in hand, Skinner took his notes, books, and what he had learned back to Romney to become the manager of his family’s farm, which became known as W. H. Skinner and Son.³⁷ He noted that his Purdue experiences quickly influenced his decision to buy sheep for the farm: In regard to the sheep business I may say that when I graduated from Purdue I bought some ewes with the same idea that you have in mind, and although I left the farm in two years and the ewes were consequently given less attention that if I had remained, they made good interest on investment on the shares.³⁸ For the next two and half years following his graduation, he and his father worked side by side, building up the farm.³⁹

Skinner was and would forever be a product of the farm. He understood what it took to grow corn and hay, and to raise cattle, hogs, and sheep. He was the son of a farmer, and for the rest of his life, he carried that experience with him.

But Skinner had a curiosity that looked beyond the horse that pulled his plow across the field. He saw successful farmers speak at the Farmers’ Institute programs, which in turn influenced how he saw his own farm. But it was what he experienced at the 1893 Winter Short Course that unlocked his imagination, persuading him to further his education at Purdue University. Little did he know then that his on-the-farm experiences coupled with a four-year agriculture degree would present him with opportunities to help the farmers of Indiana in the near future.

From 1899 to 1901, John Skinner worked as the assistant agriculturist to Professor William Latta and recorded his observations and activities in this field notebook.

Courtesy of Purdue University Libraries, Karnes Archives and Special Collections.

The Transition from Farmer to Livestock Professor

JOHN SKINNER WAS NOT THE SAME PERSON IN 1898 as he had been prior to entering college five years earlier. He had enjoyed his experiences at college and thought that someday it might be possible to work for Purdue University. He caught a break in 1898 when he accepted a three-month appointment as an assistant to the university professor of veterinary science, Arvill Wayne Bitting. He worked for Bitting from January to March, when work on the farm slowed down, then returned to Romney in time to help with the busy springtime chores on the family farm.¹

Skinner’s life and career took a another turn away from farming and toward university work in April 1899, when he accepted an offer from his former agriculture professor, William Latta, to be an assistant agriculturist. Latta’s previous assistant, William B. Anderson, had just resigned this position to go back to his farm in southern Indiana.² Skinner would be doing agronomic research—managing field experiments, collecting field data, and summarizing findings—within the Agricultural Experiment Station at Purdue.³ His primary day-to-day activities involved looking after the wheat, corn, and oat variety trials that Latta had built his reputation on. As Skinner conducted experiments on planting depths, seeding rates, and row spacings, he could see that the results they were generating were creating quite a stir among the state’s growers. Latta influenced his younger assistant by showing Skinner what it took to be an agricultural scientist at a land-grant university.

As an assistant, Skinner was a meticulous and detailed note taker, each day writing down what he thought important—from plowing ground and weeding plots to applying manure—in his personal field notebook.⁴ He helped Latta conduct the first side-by-side experiments comparing commercial fertilizers and manures, and in 1901 coauthored Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 88, Systems of Cropping with and without Fertilization, with Latta. At the time, the bulletins were one way university scientists communicated their research findings to growers and other agricultural academicians, so being an author on his first major bulletin was exciting and gratifying.

Skinner’s own research interests differed from those that Latta pursued, and just as he had done with William Anderson, Latta encouraged Skinner to pursue those. Anderson had been experimenting with forage crops as a way of extending the time cattle remained on pasture in the fall. Anderson was also using forage crops as a supplemental feed during droughts.⁵ Skinner continued the experiments with forages that Anderson had started, observing how livestock responded to field corn, sweet sorghum, dwarf rapeseed, field pea, and vetches when used as forages.⁶ And, like many other researchers around the country, Skinner became quite interested in whether soybeans could be used as a forage for livestock.⁷ He also conducted research to determine optimum planting dates and seeding rates for red clover, crimson clover, and alfalfa.⁸

He must have been pleased when on March 27, 1901, the Agricultural Experiment Station at Purdue sent to the state’s agricultural newspapers a summary of his work with rapeseed and its cultivation.⁹ This first press release was just the start for Skinner, who would go on to disseminate most of his findings during his career through the agricultural press.

As Latta became comfortable with Skinner, he trusted his assistant with additional duties beyond those of just managing the agronomic trials on the farm. Latta put Skinner in charge of the soil physics laboratory as well, and Skinner would occasionally take over Latta’s teaching responsibilities when the professor attended meetings away from campus. On rare occasions, Latta asked Skinner to answer his mail. During the week of November 26, 1900, while Latta conducted Farmers’ Institutes programs across the state, he must have asked Skinner to reply to any letters that he felt comfortable answering.¹⁰ Skinner only replied to ten letters that week.

It is interesting that only one letter among Latta’s 10,000 is signed with the title Dean. But that one letter was not signed by Latta but by Skinner, who thanked a Chicago, Illinois, man for getting admission tickets for Purdue staff and students to the 1900 International Live Stock Exposition. Skinner’s November 26 letter noted, [W]e expect several of our students to enter in the judging contest. Skinner signed the letter W. C. Latta, Dean, followed by J. H. Skinner, Asst. Agriculturist.¹¹

Though Latta had for years managed the affairs of Purdue’s School of Agriculture as the unofficial or de facto dean, he was never given the rank of dean by the university’s board of trustees. One can surmise that, after sending out the letter, someone in Latta’s office noticed the new title bestowed on Professor Latta and Skinner was told not to refer to Latta as such, because no other letters were ever signed that way. Ironically, Skinner would years later become the person to sign his letters as the first dean of the Purdue University School of Agriculture.

Skinner seldom gave speeches on Latta’s research, leaving that to the agriculture professor himself. But one of the few presentations Skinner made was to address the Tippecanoe County Farmers’ Institute in February 1900. A summary of the day’s events indicated that Mr. J. H. Skinner, Assistant Agriculturist of the [Agricultural] Experiment Station made a brief report on what has been done at Purdue with Alfalfa.¹²

While the presentation was described as brief, it was long on personal impact. One can only imagine what Skinner thought and how he felt as he was introduced by the moderator and walked up to address the audience with his father in attendance. No doubt the son made eye contact and exchanged smiles with his father as he spoke that day about his work with alfalfa. And how exciting it must have been for the son when, at the same institute, his father received first prize for the best exhibit of merchantable yellow corn.¹³ Father and son shared a special moment that day, one that both would long remember.

John Skinner was asked once by Purdue’s livestock professor, Charles S. Plumb, to speak for him at a Farmers’ Institute in the small town of Dayton, Indiana.¹⁴ Skinner spoke on the profitability of feeding corn fodder to cattle. Little did the audience know then that Skinner’s research on feeding, judging, and managing livestock would make him the main attraction at educational and livestock association programs in the near future.

In 1901, twenty-seven-year-old Skinner was an up-and-coming agricultural scientist. He had quite the résumé for a man so young, with practical knowledge of a working farm, a four-year agriculture degree, and experience as a field crop researcher. Not many men possessed such credentials, and those that had both experience and education were seriously sought after by other land-grant institutions. When positions would open up, professors at those colleges would routinely contact their colleagues at other land-grant schools to see if they knew of candidates to fill the vacancies. With so few college-educated graduates to choose from and so many open positions to fill, personal contacts were the only way to find qualified applicants.

At that time, both the University of Illinois and the University of Nebraska were searching for instructors in their animal husbandry departments. It seems that Skinner’s name came up in conversations between Professor Latta and his counterparts from those universities. Latta gave his appraisal of Skinner’s work to Nebraska Professor Thomas L. Lyon, writing:

… permit me to say that I consider Mr. J. H. Skinner a very efficient assistant. His own work has been chiefly in the [Agricultural Experiment] Station lines. He has however, had charge of the laboratory instruction in Soil Physics [School of Agriculture] and has proved entirely competent to direct classes in this line of work so far as it has developed here. He has also occasionally taken my class room work in my absence and conducted it satisfactorily. He is a man of force, with a strong practical bent. He is also a good student and will, I believe, prove highly successful both as a Station worker and Instructor. He is a man of excellent character, steady habits, and has proved a very agreeable, prompt, and efficient subordinate officer. With additional experience and the broadening influence that will come from contact with another Institution, he will become, in my judgment, a strong effective man. I believe he is now considering a proposition to go to the Illinois University. I think he will accept a position there. If anything should change his decision, he would of course be open to an offer from your Institution. We should be glad to have him remain with us at least another year, but it is our policy to send our graduates, who desire to engage in Station and College work, elsewhere, as much as we can because we believe that is the best way to insure their larger growth and usefulness.¹⁵

Prior to the inquiry from Nebraska, the University of Illinois College of Agriculture had expressed interest in employing Skinner. Willard John Kennedy, an instructor in animal husbandry, and Eugene Davenport, dean of the university’s College of Agriculture and professor of animal husbandry, had spoken to Latta about his assistant. Latta’s appraisal of Skinner led both men to believe that John Harrison Skinner would make a good livestock instructor at Illinois. First, however, the men wanted to observe Skinner’s teaching skills, because, while Skinner’s résumé was impressive, he lacked sufficient experience in the college classroom. Since the Illinois job involved teaching animal husbandry courses to college students, they wanted to make sure he was capable of being an effective teacher.

Kennedy wrote to Skinner on May 8, 1901:

I would like to know what work you are doing this semester in the way of live stock instruction,—as to judging, etc. Will you kindly inform me what days you will be at work with your class, as Dean Davenport and I intend visiting your Institution at an early date and would be very much pleased to be there when you were conducting class work.¹⁶

But Davenport and Kennedy were unable to make their planned visit with Skinner. Kennedy wrote, I do not know definitely when we will be able to visit you, but will try to be with you on Friday, the 17th [of May]. Should this be possible I will wire you early that morning or the evening before.¹⁷ It appears that the intended meeting never took place.

Instead, Skinner received a job offer from Davenport on May 25, 1901. Illinois had decided to offer Skinner the job, sight unseen. Latta’s opinion of Skinner would have to suffice, and since other universities were interested in Skinner, they thought the better of waiting.

By reasons of recent [state] appropriations a new place will probably be created in the [University of Illnois] College of Agriculture for the coming year and presumably thereafter. The position will likely carry the title of Instructor in Animal Husbandry and the principal work confined to this department will be along the line of horses and sheep. It is expected that this man will take entire charge of these two branches of the subject under the general direction of the head of the department. I have taken some pains to familiarize myself with your fitness for the position, and while it is our desire to go farther into these subjects than has ever yet been undertaken in our College of Agriculture, I have become satisfied that your training and experience have put you in line for succeeding in this work.

I write to inquire whether you would care to consider the proposition and come to the University in this capacity, with the title of Instructor in Animal Husbandry