Similar innovations supporting the advancement of technical training both within and outside public education occurred thereafter in other states. State legislation promoting vocational and technical education became more common as interest spread from the industrial states of the East to the Midwest, and later to the South and far West. The greatest initiative for state legislation supporting the development of vocational and technical education came from the Morrill Act of 1862 signed by Abraham Lincoln. Also called the Land Grant Act of 1862, this legislation provided a comprehensive and far-reaching scheme of public endowment of higher education that was to bring higher education within the reach of the average citizen, not just the wealthy, for the first time. It established programs of training at the college level in agricultural education, industrial and trade education, and home economics education, and it did much to clarify the image of this type of technical training in the eyes of the public.