The School Of Mines

THE SCHOOL OF MINES

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A LANSING DISPATCH ON THE 

PROPOSED REMOVAL.

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The argument of a Great Saving in Expense.--What Gov. Pingree has to Say on the Subject.

The following Lansing dispatch appears in this afternoon's Detroit Evening News:

The movement to remove the college of mines of the university and use the present college buildings at Houghton for normal school purposes has not been abandoned because of the action of the house in making an appropriation for a normal school at Marquette. One-half of the senators are openly in favor of making the change. Five are inclined to think the plan a good one, although they are not prepared to definitely announce themselves. The 16 senators who will vote for removal are Blakeslee, Brown, Collingwood, Flood, Giddings, Graham, Helme, Loomis, Lyon, Monaghan, Potter, Sayre, Sheldon, Stoll, Wagner and Baker. The doubtful senators are Ward, Atwood, Humphrey, Milliken and A. G. Smith.

Gov. Pingree says: "I believe it should be done. It's a good thing and will save the taxpayers a lot of money. Those copper fellows talk about paying taxes, but they don't pay any more than they have to, you bet, and not near as much as they ought to. They don't pay on anything like their real valuation, but the farmers down here are taxed on everything they own, and if they don't come up with the cash, the collector takes a cow."

the senators who favor removal insist that neither the regents nor faculty of the university have ever said a word directly or indirectly that could be construed as a wish to have the college at Ann Arbor. the former say the entire movement is based on the logic of the situation, it being the only sensible and economical thing to do. They submit that the best reply to claim that a student of mining engineering can be educated at Houghton in one fourth the time that we could be at the university, and that he could not be properly educated at the latter place at all, is the fact that in the Columbia College of Mines, the best institution of its kind in the world, the course is but four years, and the college is situated in the heart of New York city.

A total of $576,000 has been appropriated for the Houghton college since its establishment in 1885, and it is now asking for $170,000 for the ensuing two years. On the basis of average attendance it costs $425 per year per capita to educate its students. This cost is compared with $61.10 at the university, $48.40 at the Normal college, and $27.20 at the Agricultural college. These figures make the total cost to the state of graduation per capita seven times the above figures in each instance, in addition to the payments made by the student. It is further that removal would do away with the expenses of the board of control, as the work of that board would be done by the regents of the university without extra cost.