former disbelief in its utility, Illinois farmers now expect it to solve the economic problems of modern agriculture by improving the useful plants and animals, by better methods of culture, by preserving the fertility of the soil, and especially by instruction in making every acre do its utmost in contributing to the comfort and welfare of mankind. The casual visitor to the University sees its magnificent and well kept grounds, its numerous buildings, and the groups of busy students hastening from class to laboratory. Perhaps he enters a few buildings, sees a class room, a library or a shop, but he gains no knowledge of the University as a whole, and of its numerous activities. It is probable that the residents of the two cities know less of the University than of the clock factory, or of the new fair ground. Even its students have little acquaintance with colleges other than their own, and its instructors scarcely remember each other's faces. Certainly the public can have but the slightest knowledge of its work and of the opportunities offered to students. To make it fully known to the people of the State is a great problem, not solved by the insertion of advertisements in journals. To calmly await the fame earned by its graduates is too slow a process for this century. Four thousand students in the University of a state containing five millions of people is but one to twelve hundred and fifty persons. This is certainly not a maximum ratio, but one that may be increased especially while the value of land continues to rise and opportunities for untrained and uneducated men occur less frequently in future. Success for young men without capital will require a more complete and lengthened educational training. The University of Berlin was founded about a century since, and it has become the largest and leading university in the world. It does not comprise a faculty of engineering, as this is provided in a separate institution of full university rank, likewise the largest and most famous in its special field. Location in the chief city of Germany has certainly contributed much to the importance of both these institutions. But the available resources of the Prussian state and people will not always excel those at hand in rich Illinois. If the population of the State continues its rapid rate of increase in future, it is reasonable to believe that it will be doubled at some future date, and that ten millions of people will be comfortably supported, when intensive farming is practiced thoroughly, and its natural resources and manufactures are fully developed. Crowded Chicago will then be abandoned for the smaller cities and the country, for the pursuit of vocations perhaps yet unknown. The number of students in this University should then be doubled or it might increase to one person in a thousand. With ten thousand students in all its departments, this University might well aspire to be the best, the strongest, and the most useful in the world, as well as the largest. Its supreme advantage over the college or university of the olden type is, that its endowment consists not of money, stocks, and like investments, but chiefly in the good will and public spirit of the people of Illinois, willing and anxious to provide the most useful and most thorough training for young men and women, without restriction by sex, creed, or race. THREE ITEMS IN UNIVERSITY HISTORY THOMAS J. BURRILL, PH.D., LL.D. The growth of the University of Illinois has been, with slight regressions, continuously forward from the beginning. The momentum has varied greatly at different times but it has seldom decreased to zero and the resting periods, such as they were, have been more apparent than real. In the development from a small beginning it is inevitable that there should have been certain crises in the history, certain prominent happenings, which affected for weal or woe in each case the institution and its vital interests. I am now to speak of three of these and what came of them. They are selected with the clear apprehension that others might equally as well have been chosen for the purpose now in hand, but the builders who are mentioned should not be forgotton whoever else are left out in the recital. I. THE FOUNDATION PLANS Owing especially to the initiative of Professor Jonathan B. Turner and his coadjutors the people of the State had been aroused to the need of higher education adapted to the special requirements of people engaged in industrial pursuits, so that when the general government made its famous donation of land scrip in 1862 to the several states, individual opinions in Illinois were very pronounced as to what use should be made of the fund. But these opinions were very diverse. In fact no two were even substantially alike, if details were at all considered. While Professor Turner and his followers argued for the founding of one generously endowed and strongly manned institution in which real scholarship should be promoted, certain others contended for the distribution of the fund among the then existing colleges of the State, or among certain of them, for the establishment therein of departments to be devoted to practical affairs. Still others, and these were very assertive, demanded the establishment of a separate and distinctively technical institution solely for the agricultural interests. When the matter came up in the General Assembly various attempts were made to settle by law some of these conflicting propositions, but the legislators themselves held decidedly too divergent views to make agreement possible except that there should be created one new institution to be called the Illinois Industrial University and to this the whole congressional fund should be given. Other than this the only legal provision by which the first Board of Trustees were directed in determining what this institution should be or do is contained in these words: "The Trustees shall have power to provide the requisite buildings, apparatus and conveniences; to fix rates for tuition; to appoint such professors and instructors and establish and provide the management for such model farms, model art and other departments and professorships as may be required to teach in the most thorough manner, such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic. arts, and military tactics, without excluding other scientific and classical studies. This was the charter presented to the first Board of Trustees, by which they were to determine what character this Illinois Industrial University should have. The last part of the name did not mean anything; for were there not already in the State several so-called universities whose names were the biggest part of them? One could found a university as easily as he could an academy or a college, and among the masses there was little distinction between them. Note, too, the Trustees were simply given power to do certain things, they were apparently not required to do those things and were not forbidden. to do anything unless as some claimed they could not exclude "other scientific and classical studies." This Board of Trustees were not educators professionally. Among the thirty-two members only two had ever had any personal experience in building up or managing an institution of higher learning, and only three more were entitled to write after their names an academic degree. They were mostly men of affairs-farmers, business men, two or three lawyers, one doctor, one pastor of a church, and so on. Like other people these men held widely diverse opinions as to what the new institution could or should be, what purposes it should fill, what methods should be adopted in filling any purpose. There were great anticipations, for.the endowment was usually considered large enough for the attainment of wonderful things. Were there not four hundred and eighty thousand acres of land scrip, besides the donation by Champaign county and allied interests themselves aggregating, so it was claimed, about four hundred thousand dollars? The sums looked phenomenally large in those days, but their supposed munificence only stimulated activity in planning what was to be done with the money, and thus further increased the diversity of opinions. At the first meeting of the Trustees, which was held at the newly located seat of the University in May, 1867, it was found necessary to pass an order that no member should speak more than once upon any question without leave, and that no one should speak at one time more than five minutes. This indicates something of the readiness for debate among the thirty members of the Board present. But at this same meeting held in the Congregational Church in Champaign, a committee on courses of study and faculty read a report which more than any other one thing settled at the time and for all time the main features of the newly founded University. This report brought together many of the nebulous ideas prevailing at the time, condensed them into well-shaped forms, threw out the unassimilable, arranged them in order, added new elements and put life and action into the whole. The document as examined today is a masterly one, but read in the light of the times when it was written, considered with reference to the conditions existing forty years ago in the educational world, it shows not only keenness of appreciation of the needs to be met at the time, but a prophetic vision of the demands and possibilities of the future. If the Trustees at their first meeting in March, in Springfield, found little or nothing for their guidance in the law, they now had a charter by which to shape their action. Not that all accepted its provisions. There was still much variance of opinion and voluble discussion, but from that day, May 8, 1867, until now, the ideals presented in that paper have been closely followed, wittingly or not, in the developments which now make up the history of the institution. The paper was written and read by Dr. John M. Gregory, the first President, or Regent as he was then called. With him were associated on the committee Newton Bateman, then Superintendent of Public Instruction, Mason Brayman of Springfield, S. S. Hayes of Chicago, and Willard C. Flagg of Moro, near Alton, one of the first college graduates of that time, who saw enough in agriculture to meet the mental activities of an educated man. Dr. Bateman was a graduate of Illinois college and a pupil and friend of Professor Turner. Mr. Flagg was a graduate of Yale. II. THE CHANGE OF NAME The extravagant ideas current half a century ago as to what could be accomplished in the way of founding and building a university upon an endowment of a few hundred thousand dollars, as well as upon the subjects of what might be expected from the new education portrayed in visionary addresses by certain theoretical enthusiasts, inevitably led to reaction. The administrative officers of the State and the members of the Legislature could not understand why more funds should be needed to support an institution already so well provided as was this one founded upon the national Land Grant. Slowly and grudgingly it was admitted that building and some equipment must be provided from the State treasury and for these purposes certain appropriations were made by every General Assembly after the founding of the University, but for the payment of professors' salaries, surely the endowment must suffice. Let it also be remembered that though a definite policy had been adopted by a majority of the Trustees. which was never abandoned, there were hundreds of thoughtful people in the State who had been warmly interested in the original project and who still retained their special ideas upon the subject, who were in one way or another greatly dissatisfied with what had been done. It could not have been otherwise whatever had been done. Some of these looked upon the whole cause as a lost one, gave up interest, did nothing; others became open enemies. The newspapers well reflected this condition of things and either ignored the institution altogether or were ever ready with criticisms. The great dailies sneered because there was nothing taught but agriculture; the agricultural press found nothing commendable in the agricultural investigations and instruction. Few people, and among them the editors, really knew anything about what was done or taught and none seemed to care to learn. The name which the founders had bestowed upon the institution, though expressive and honorable in their own minds, proved to be incorrectly interpreted, and this again led to wide misunderstanding of the nature of the institution. The word "industrial" had become associated with charity and penal institutions. There was indeed but one other in the whole country called industrial, which did not partake of these latter characteristics. This was and is the Arkansas Industrial University, named directly from our own and on whose campus there exists today a duplicate from the same plans of our University Hall. Well-to-do parents did not want to send their children to an industrial school; those trying to provide for outcasts or criminals found to their surprise that the Industrial University was not organized for their reception. In the early eighties, a county school superintendent of Macon County, almost adjoining ours, wrote, asking if three unruly children of a widowed mother, the oldest thirteen years of age, could be provided for in the Illinois Industrial University. graduate of the class of 1876, seeking employment, was asked where he was educated, and upon replying, at the Illinois Industrial University, the inquiry followed at once, "What were you sent up for?" With this state of things, is there much wonder that appropriations from the State came by the hardest efforts, if they were made at all? Is there much wonder that growth was very slow, if any took place? But efforts were made against discouraging odds, in the face of indifference and sometimes of ridicule, with concealed and open enemies at home and abroad, during a depressed period in the financial and commercial affairs of the country. With little forward movement anywhere in any line of activity, the University, nevertheless, did gain from 1880 onward. For the first time in its history State appropriation toward the expenses of general instruction was secured in 1881. The amount was indeed small but the acknowledgment thus made was great. The money only amounted to five thousand seven |