GENERAL INFORMATION 3

into a firmly organized and well equipped teaching institution, was brought
into close and orderly relations with other public schools of the state, and
was made a moral force in the lives of its students and of the community.
Dr. Bascom found the recognition of coeducation halfhearted and ambigu-
ous and made it distinct and complete. He found the income deficient, the
buildings, the library, and the scientific apparatus inadequate, and the
faculty too small for the proper division of the departments and the main-
tenance of high standards. In every point the institution was put on a
sound basis. Buildings were erected and satisfactorily equipped, especially
for the science departments. The library was enlarged and the faculty
became a body of specialists, rather than a group of general teachers.
Dr. Bascom more than any other man was responsible for the increase in
income which made this progress possible, by the creation of a ratio tax,
established in 1876 in the proportion of one-tenth mill to each dollar of the
property valuation of the state. The system has been maintained with a
few interruptions and with liberal increases ever since. Finally the free
high schools, the establishment of which was promoted by the act of 1875,
granting state aid to such institutions, were bound to the University by a
system of accrediting their graduates on the one hand, and on the other by
the recognition of the university degree as a qualification for a certificate
to teach in the public schools of the state.

In the administration of Dr. Bascom’s successor, Dr. Thomas Chrowder
Chamberlin (1887-1892), a graduate of Beloit College, the strong college
of Dr. Bascom began to grow into a true university. In all ways graduate
work assumed a place as an active part of the institution. Scholars with
the ideas of research brought from Johns-Hopkins or from Germany were
added to the faculty. The first university fellowships were established.
The degree of doctor of philosophy was offered. A reorganization into the
Colleges of Letters and Science, Engineering, Agriculture, and Law, effected
in 1889, testifies to the growing vigor and more distinctly understood aims
of the professional and technical institutions. Intercollegiate debates and
athletics and “student activities” began to be heard of, and in brief the
tendencies which have resulted in the conditions of the present day showed
themselves definitely.

During the presidency of Dr. Charles Kendall Adams (1892-1901)
these tendencies became dominant. A large armory and gymnasium was
built. An athletic field was acquired—Camp Randall, the historic encamp-
ment where the Wisconsin troops were concentrated during the Civil War.
The University became socially more complex. A dean of women was ap-
pointed. A school of music and a choral society were established. In
every way the institution developed. The colleges of law and engineering
grew rapidly, and had to be provided with new buildings. The fields of
political, economic, and social science, and of history were greatly strength-
ened. The University had become very definitely the recognized culmina-
tion of the public instruction of the state, and was resorted to in increas-
ing numbers by graduates of the state normal schools. The institution was
cramped for want of room, and though the increases in building and
equipment were rapid, they barely kept pace with the enormous growth
in the number of students. The crowning achievement of Dr. Adam’s
administration was the erection on university ground of a building to house,
with the university library, the library of the State Historical Society—a
reference library of great value, and in some aspects unique. The improve-
ment of the facilities placed at the service of the University by the opening
of the library, which took place in 1900, marks an epoch in the history of
the institution.