Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Commerce Addition [PAGE 3]

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I ' D I V E R S I T Y O F ILLINOIS

MEMORANDUM CONCERNING THE LAYINC. OF THE CORNERSTONE OF THE ADDITION TO T H E COMMERCE BUILDING THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1914, AT 3 P. M.

Dr. Edmund J. James, President of the University of Illinois, announces that the cornerstone of the Addition to the: Commerce Building of the University of Illinois will be laid on Illinois Day, Thursday, December 3, 1914, at three o'clock in the afternoon. The present Commerce Building was finished two years ago, and the remarkable increase in attendance on the University courses in commerce is emphasized by the fact that it is already necessary to plan for a larger building. In the planning of the building opportunity was fortunately provided for successive enlargements which might be made necessary by the increasing number of students. The sudden demand for better trained men for work in the field of foreign commerce, occasioned by the great war in Europe, and the consequent chances for increasing otir foreign trade has sent up the attendance at the commerce courses by leaps and bounds. The registration of students has increased over 54 per cent the present year over the past. The Trustees of the University determined to take time by the forelock and have the building ready for occupation when the crisis should become acute. Until a special administrative building can be erected the administrative offices of the University will be housed in this addition, but so as to give way gradually as the growing needs of the College of Commerce may make necessary. The removal of the administrative offices from the present Natural History Building to the addition to the Commerce Building will make way for much needed enlargement of the laboratories in zoology, botany and geology. The rapid increase in attendance upon the courses in agriculture and engineering has compelled more adequate provision for the fundamental sciences underlying these subjects. Scientific work in agriculture depends for its adequate development upon thoroughgoing work in botany, zoology and geology. Adequate provision for more thorough work and for facilities for a larger number of students was absolutely necessary in order to meet the demands of the agricultural interests of the state. Down to within a generation the science of agriculture consisted chiefly of agricultural chemistry. But today agricultural bacteriology is quite as important. In fact the next great advance in the promotion of scientific agriculture must be expected in the field of bacteriology; it being already apparent that the productiveness of the soil is very materially determined by the work of bacteria, in regard to which little is known, though the general importance may be fully realized by calling to mind the fundamental function performed by nitrogen fixing bacteria.

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