almost an exact plain, without hill, or tree, or rock, or river, it has made a campus as homelike and ennobling as any one of us has seen. Without building materials in the neighborhood, it has erected buildings at once spacious and serviceable. With a school of architecture of its own, without close association with the best architecture of the world, with considerable of the feeling that a new building belonged to an architect who had been trained by the University, and that in time every graduate in architecture ought to be represented by a building, it has, in one way or another, which need not be specified here, worked out, or worried out, a very respectable collection of architectural effects. Located between and across the borderline of two small cities, it has risen above their rivalries, made them useful suburbs, and given them a useful mission-even the housing of the people of a university. Started in an environment not specially conducive to scholarly pursuits, it has developed a setting which is beginning to support its work admirably. Far from the geographical or popular center of the State, it has overcome distances and become a conspicuous spot on the map of Illinois. Without a large city to draw upon for students, even beset with deep prejudices and sharp rivalries, it has filled all the highways with happy young men and maidens, coming to or going from its work. At a distance from large libraries and without free association with the centers of scholarship, and until now with very inadequate support, it has built up an instructional force exceptionally able at many points and of very satisfactory average strength. Under the disadvantages as well as the advantages of a popular support and a democratic management, it has become widely celebrated for its unparalleled growth, and has fought its way to a very high place in the list of large American universities. One hundred out of the one hundred and two counties of Illinois, forty-three other states, and eight foreign countries are represented in its student body. In the breadth of its offerings and the measure of the loftiness of its ambitions it is second to none. When it was robbed of most of its invested and much of its operating funds, it succeeded in three weeks-with the help of the Legislature and Governor in converting its discomfiture into better securities than universities ordinarily have,-good, five per cent. everlasting bonds of the commonwealth of Illinois. Later than all neighboring state universities in getting started, and exceedingly slow in gaining moneyed support, it has at last won the genuine pride and generous confidence of a State which can do whatever it will,—for which all of us make most sincere acknowledgments in the hope of yet larger favors still to come. Drawing upon other universities and all other sources of supply for all it can get, it is increasing its contributions to the scholarship of the country and doing more than was ever foreseen to train the young men and women of a rich and imperial State to the

serious business of making the most of themselves through intelligent and tiring work of every kind and through a rational use of the results of commercial and industrial prosperity.

This State is fortunate in that its State University and its Agricultural and Mechanical colleges are being developed together. The work of each supports the other. It is producing a very large institution, one with broad foundations and innumerable offerings. With all of the departments here where there is small need of physicians, its medical colleges are where medical men are most in demand and at the largest center of medical education in the world. All in all, it is accumulating students with a rapidity which is creating a responsibility beyond compute.

We all know this, but it is well to express it. It gives us strength. We are equal to it. By common assent and intuitive impulse this institution is now to be made great as well as big. The state university development in America is one of the very greatest as well as the most surprising movements in world education. It is the logical outgrowth of the democratic advance. Few will say that the state universities are not already as potential as the universities which have preceded them. In opportunities to serve a people through the applications of learning to diversified life, as well as in the aspiration and the strength to make that service great, they are ranking university operations everywhere. Illinois expects to lag behind no other state in the generosity and the intelligence of her doing for the higher learning. She provides the means and calls the best men she can get for her service. Then she wants a new advance. She will not temporize with opportunity. She will not tolerate excuses. She will go forward. With profound regard for all the states around her, with the warmest appreciation of the aid she is getting from other universities, and the most unqualified assurances of reciprocity, the key note of this great week at the University of Illinois sounds a decided advance to higher and stronger ground.

One who has the gifts and the strength to lead this advance is to be envied the opportunity. I wish I could compound the thinking and express the reflections and the hopefulness of us all. The suggestions born of my thinking and my experience which bear upon this hour and the future of this University are in these plain and fundamental, briefly stated propositions:

Serve the commonwealth of Illinois, not only in her industries, but in her political theories and practices, in rearing noble ideals of true culture and in strengthening her conception of the moral obligations of such a people. Do it when sure of your ground, even though it involves the saying of some things which, at the moment, many of her people may not like to hear.

Aid every educational activity, whether public school or parish

school or proprietary school, whether endowed college or professional school, or private or public library, or study club, or whatever else it may be, if it has the purpose of enlarging knowledge or extending culture in or out of the schools. Be true to every other university. Never forget that meanness defeats itself. In education the way to get rich is through enriching others.

Bring to this University the best scholars who can be procured in any part of the world. There are no artificial barriers and no political boundaries in the democracy of learning. Pay what you have to pay in order to have the best instruction in the country. This is one of the leading things for which the last administration was disposed to give way to the new one. The old one could have gone on in the old It was believed that a new leader could take some important steps more surely than the old one. If not taken, an opportunity will be lost. He is here to fill the gap of opportunity to the full. Let the fact be established and let the country come to know that no more new truth is likely to be dug out anywhere, and no better instruction provided anywhere, than at the University of Illinois.

way.

Develop young men in the faculties by giving them their opportunities; and assure them just credit for all the work they do. Do not stunt them by letting them think that they are so very much larger than they really are.

Enter into student sympathies and share student outlook. Brace up the timid and the hesitating. Find ways to put surplus energies. to useful ends. Give all plenty of good work to do. Forgive the ones who are a trifle too active but not so very bad. Let the vicious know that there is no place for viciousness in the affairs of a university. Command the situation through the stirring of sentiment, through the development of opinion, and through reliance upon that moral sense which in the last analysis is always overwhelming in a university crowd.

Let justice and sense stand, whoever falls. Let there be a day in court for all. Be as just to a student when a teacher is at fault as to a teacher when a student is in trouble.

Fight for absolute cleanness. Insist that everything shall comport with the purposes of such an institution. Demand that everyone in the service shall have undivided devotion to the work which he undertakes. Avoid expenditures which do not commend themselves to the good sense of sane and experienced men. Reject all extravagances. When money is expended see that a dollar buys the value of a dollar. Stand for nothing until convinced; shrink from nothing merely because personal interests are in the way.

Mr. President, administer your splendid estate, and execute the high purpose for which this great aggregation of material things and of intellectual and moral forces is maintained. Do it without fear or

favor, without thinking much of the hazards or of the compensations, and the people of the commonwealth of Illinois, and the Almighty God, will take care of you.

The real growth and strength of this University have hardly appeared. The future will overshadow the past. Hearts, minds, money, boundless energy, the public interests and the common pride are all enlisted to carry the University of Illinois to a place of the very first significance in American education. All that is wanted is a scholarly, a sane, and a fearless leadership. If one cannot supply it, another will. With one accord we think we have found the man who can.

I am transferring to him not only a title but an opportunity; not only an office but my hope and my confidence that he may enlarge it. I did not impair this office; it is a greater office than it used to be.. It is as precious a thing as I shall ever have to give. Before I could transfer it with cheerfulness and with confidence there has been need to think more deeply than have many others of the needs of the situation here and in another state, and of the adaptation of men to differing work. My attachments are no stronger there than here. The decision came out of a mental process which has tried out feeling and broken some strings. The new President has been an all-important factor in the case. But I am ready. The attributes of the new leader give me confidence and the universal acclaim makes me know that all is well.

A true son of Illinois; with the fine lineage of her best pioneers; with native pride in her history; with scholarly appreciation of her resources and of her intellectual development; with a mature and balanced understanding of her needs, as well as with patriotic enthusiasm for all that may uplift her; a severe student, trained in the best schools of the world; a virile teacher; a publicist of wide reputation; an experienced and trenchant administrator: we envy him the gifts and the opportunity which will let him impress lives, shape ends, weave his name into the history of this University, and add to the greatness of his State; and we give him all the cheer that can spring out of song, with all the sincerity that can breathe through prayer.

INAUGURAL ADDRESS

THE FUNCTION OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY

EDMUND J. JAMES, PH.D., LL.D.

President of the University

The University of Illinois owes its foundation to the initiative of the federal government of the United States.

The celebrated Morrill Land Grant Act of July 2, 1862, provided that each state in the Union should be granted thirty thousand acres of land for each senator and representative to which the state was entitled in the federal Congress, for the establishment and support "of at least one college, whose leading object shall be (without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics) to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, * * * in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life."

This has turned out to be one of the most magnificent endowments of higher education ever made by any government, church or individual, whether we have regard to its immediate effects in leading to the establishment of the particular institutions contemplated in the act, or to its remoter effects in further increasing and stimulating state benevolences for this same general purpose.

As the result of the said grant, at least one institution corresponding to the above description has been established in each state and territory in the Union. There are now more than forty-nine in all! The states have in nearly every instance contributed to the further endowment of these colleges in the form of permanent funds or what is practically the same thing, in the form of permanent annual appropriations, exceeding, and in some cases far exceeding, the amount given by the federal government itself.

In some instances the new college was incorporated in, or annexed to, some existing institution. In others it was made an entirely independent institution limited to instruction in agriculture and the mechanic arts. In still others it became the nucleus of a great state university, with all the departments properly belonging to an institution which may justly lay claim to that time-honored name.

This was the case in Illinois. The proceeds of the sale of this original land grant constitute an endowment fund providing about thirty-two thousand dollars a year for the support of the institution.

In 1887 the federal government passed an act known as the Hatch Act, providing an appropriation of fifteen thousand dollars a year, to each state in the Union, for the establishment and support of an agri

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