The University of Washington occupies a campus of 350 acres, located
entirely within the limits of the city of Seattle.
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The buildings of the university consist of the administration building,
science hall, chemistry building, engineering building, power house,
dormitories for men and women, and other smaller buildings. In addition
to the foregoing, the university will come into the possession
of a number of commodious structures at the conclusion of the
Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. For the current year, the enrollment
of students at the university is 1,838. The faculty consists of
115 members and for the ensuing biennial period the legislature
appropriated the sum of $673,000 for the support of the institution.
The State College of Washington is located at Pullman, in Whitman
county. This institution emphasizes technical and scientific education
and in its agricultural departments has accomplished remarkable results.
It is annually giving the state a number of highly trained experts in
modern agricultural science, and the farming interests of the state
have been greatly assisted by the work of the college. Instruction is
given in civil engineering, mechanical and electrical engineering,
geology, botany, chemistry, zoology, economic science and history,
modern languages, domestic economy, besides the practical operation
of a dairy farm and other branches of agricultural industry. The
institution, in addition to its land endowment, receives annual
assistance from the federal government and a biennial appropriation
from the state legislature.
The state also maintains three normal schools, located respectively
in the cities of Bellingham, Ellensburg and Cheney. These institutions
have a combined attendance of about 850 and are the recruiting
ground for securing instructors in the public schools.
At Vancouver is the State School for the Deaf and Blind. The defective
youth of the state are cared for in a well equipped institution
located at Medical Lake, in Spokane county, and at Chehalis is
the state training school for incorrigibles.
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LOGGED-OFF LANDS.
The problem of making a home and providing a competency for old
age upon the lands in western Washington is somewhat different
and more difficult than doing the same upon the prairie lands of
the east. As they come to the hands of the would-be tiller of the
soil, they present a forbidding and disagreeable aspect. The loggers
have left them with considerable standing timber, with the tops of
the giants of the forests lying where they fell, scattered over
the land and covering it with an almost impenetrable mass of great
limbs and brush and dead logs. If seen in the summer, there is
added the view of a mass of green vegetation, rank and to a large
extent covering up the mass of dead stuff left by the loggers with
the huge stumps sticking up through it all, mute monuments of the
lost wealth of the forest. In some instances this is somewhat relieved
by the fact that, either by accident or design, the fire has been
there and swept through it all, leaving nothing but blackened and
smouldering emblems of its prior greatness. In this case, however,
only the lighter part of the refuse has been destroyed. The great
stumps of fir and cedar are there still, blackened and perhaps
with their dead hearts burned out. Great and small decaying logs
are there, some too wet to burn, some with the bark alone burned
off, and some with the dead centers burned out, scattered about
or piled in crisscross masses as they had fallen during the ages
of the forest's growth. In either case it looks different from
the smooth surface of the sagebrush plains about to be converted
into irrigated farms or the clean face of the prairie lands covered
with grass and ready and longing for the plow. But with all their
forbidding aspects, black with a portentous cloud of hard labor
and long waiting, their known hidden wealth lures on the hardy
pioneer to the task. He throws off his coat, rolls up his sleeves,
gathers together his tools, and with the indomitable courage of
the Anglo-Saxon
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tackles the problem, works and fights and rests by turns till within
a few years he finds himself triumphant. Eventually, beneath his own
orchard trees laden with fruit, and in the comfort and delight of
his big home fireplace, he contemplates the rewards of his struggle,
as he sees his cows complacently chewing their cuds in his green
pastures and listens to the neigh of his fat horses, and at his
table, laden with all the bounty of his rich lands, thanks his Maker
for the successful completion of a hard struggle and the enjoyment
it has brought to him and his family.