Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1886 [PAGE 143]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

135 warmth contributed by the discoveries and the developments of science —the science which is the crowning and tra^ scendent glory of this youngest century of the world's life. The fable ran that Prometheus seized the fire of heaven and kindled therewith a blaze upon the , hearthstone of each humblest cottager. So must learning open the store houses of nature and bring her powers captive to uork by the ways and wains, lighten the labor, and fill garner and warehouse fofr every toiling son and daughter of the soil, the mill and the mine. And the yet greater and nobler mission of this, as of all schools of whatever grade from the humblest to the highest, is to develop and to enrich the resources of the State in the characters and the capacities of the young men and women who will so soon constitute the State. The plan of organization of the University remains as it has been from the very first. It comprises the four colleges of Agriculture, Engineering, Natural Science, and Literature and Science. This combination affords with a comparatively limited amount of working force, a very large scope of working capacity, for to each specialty is added opportunities of aid from all the others. The available faculty for the College of Agriculture, or for that of Natural Science, is considerably larger than would be likely, not to say possible, if either of these two departments were organized separately from all the others. The College of Agriculture maintains its early and honored place at the head of the list of colleges and schools. In its faculty and its equipment it is kept constantly in the foreground. Its attendance has not fallen below the figures of former years. It has been the habit of certain agricultural writers to refer to the schools of agriculture of other states, particularly Michigan, Kansas and Mississippi, as unqualifiedly successful, and to count those of other states, including Illinois, as without question failures. There is a semblance of truth, and a large proportion of error in both these statements. In the first place the schools named lie closer in time to the common schools of the state, by one, two, or even three years,, and are in so far doing academic or high school work rather than collegiate or technical work. In the second place, the schools named are schools of general science, and count all their students under the general teim agricultural. The University of Illinois is one of specialized science, and reports as agricultural students only such as make the study qf that subject the special business of their attendance.- if those schools would set forth distinctly the names of such of their students as make the study of agriculture a specialty, there is no doubt that our lists would compare favorably with any others. In the third place, an examination of the several courses of study will show that the course pursued in the University of Illinois in agriculture has an amount of actual technical agriculture in it larger thau is found in any other institution in the west, and more than twice as much as in either of those named. The generosity of the general government has furnished large opportunity for the study of agriculture by the sons of American farmers, more than forty colleges which make this subject an object of special attention being now in successful operation.