“City Blood Is No Better than Country Blood”: The Populist Movement and Admissions Policies at Public Universities

The gubernatorial election of 1892 unnerved faculty members at Kansas State Agricultural College (KSAC). Voted into office by a “fusion” of Populists and Democrats, Governor Lorenzo Lewelling filled four vacant seats on the college's seven-member governing board, overturning a Republican Party majority for the first time in the college's history. These new regents included radicals such as Edward Secrest, a farmer who pledged to “change the order of things” at KSAC, and Christian Balzac Hoffman, a miller, banker, and politician who had founded an ill-fated socialist colony in Topolobampo, Mexico. Populist interest in KSAC intensified in 1897, when a different fusionist governing board promoted Professor Thomas E. Will to the college presidency. Born on an Illinois farm, Will attended a normal school before proceeding to Harvard University, where he chaffed within “the citadel of a murderous economic system.” When offered the chair of political economy at KSAC, Will had been lecturing, writing for reform periodicals, and serving as secretary of a Christian socialist organization called The Boston Union for Practical Progress. Although he never formally joined a Populist organization, Will shared the movement's commitment to erasing class distinctions in politics and education. Following Will's inauguration, a Populist regent exulted that the masses had finally “scaled the gilded halls of the universities.”

Benjamin F. Mudge, the State Geological Surveys, and Fossil Collecting in Kansas, 1864-1870

B. F. Mudge (1817-79), appointed the first Kansas State Geologist in 1864, served for only one year. Inexperienced, and with no chance of fulfilling the requirements of an expansive law, he was succeeded in 1865 by G. C. Swallow (1817-99). Aided by F. Hawn and the other former members of Mudge's survey, Swallow, who received a larger budget and an open-ended appointment with no specified duties, produced a more impressive report, although he was not funded in 1866. Mudge went to Kansas State Agricultural College, Manhattan, where he became the preeminent Kansas geologist during the years 1866-70. Although better known for his fossil vertebrate collections in the Cretaceous of Western Kansas in the 1870's, Mudge made significant invertebrate collections from the Cretaceous. Building on the foundation laid by F. V. Hayden and F. B. Meek, he was able, with considerable input from Meek, to make a major contribution toward elucidating the stratigraphy of the Kansas Cretaceous.

Benjamin F. Mudge: The First Kansas Geologist

Benjamin Franklin Mudge (1817-79), originally from Massachusetts, was appointed State Geologist and Director of the First Geological Survey of Kansas in 1864. After failing to be reappointed in 1865 he became Professor of Natural Science at Kansas State Agricultural College, Manhattan, whose president, Joseph Denison, was an old friend and fellow Methodist. Mudge taught courses in all areas of science and spent his summers geologizing in western Kansas. An avid collector, he sent fossil specimens to Edward Cope, O. C. Marsh, and others. In the summer of 1872 he discovered a Cretaceous bird, Ichthyornis dispar, described by Marsh at Yale as the first fossil bird known to have teeth. In 1873 the KSAC regents replaced Denison by John Anderson, who dismissed Mudge and two others in February 1874 after they complained to members of the legislature about misuse of college funds and tried unsuccessfully to defeat legislative confirmation of some of the regents. Mudge then was employed by Marsh to collect fossil vertebrates (1874-77). Assisted by Samuel Williston and other former students, he sent to Marsh a large number of specimens of marine reptiles, pterodactyls, and birds from the Cretaceous beds of western Kansas. In 1877 he was sent to Colorado, where he supervised the quarrying of dinosaur bones at Cañon City. Strongly religious and a staunch opponent of slavery and alcohol, Mudge was regarded highly as a teacher and collector. He published in 1875 a description of the geology of Kansas which contained the first geological map of the State. He also was cofounder and first president of the Kansas Academy of Science.

TWO NEW SIPHONAPTERA FROM COLORADO

The author of this paper is indebted to Dr. C. P. Gillette of the Colorado State Agricultural College for the privilege of studying a part of the State College's collection of Siphonaptera, in which were found the two new species described below. Unfortunately the specimens of these two new species are somewhat mutilated but after careful examination it is possible to publish the following descriptions.