Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1869 [PAGE 379]

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365

P R E S E N T F U N D S A N D INCOME.

The endowment fund of the University, derived from sale of scrip and from the unexpended balance of Champaign county bonds, is $309,000. The annual interest of this fund is $25,290. About 25,000 acres of lands have been located with the scrip, and 75,000 acres of scrip remain to be disposed of. The expenditures during the first year, ending March 11, 1868, amounted to $35,076 90, of which $22,693 83 were for purchases of'additional lands and for permanent improvements in buildings and grounds, and $2,951 80 for expenses of sale and location of scrip. The expenditures for the current year will exceed $30,000. It is evident that the income, even when swelled to the utmost by the final sale of the scrip and lands, will be all required to meet the ordinary expenses of the University, and will be much less than that of many institutions with which it must come into competition for both teachers and students.

FUNDS N E E D E D FOR OUTFIT.

It early became apparent to the Trustees and others, that a full outfit for the several departments could not be afforded from the ordinary income of the University. The peculiar character of its industrial departments, and its extensive scientific courses, entail upon it much larger expenditures than those of an ordinary college. Its farms, gardens, machinery, cabinets and apparatus will all cost heavily at the outset. To leave these industrial departments to struggle forward without the necessary facilities for their work, is to doom them to certain failure, and to defeat the aims of Congress and the just hopes of the friends of Industrial Education. It seems, therefore, the evident duty of the Trustees who have been appointed by the State to watch over this great interest, to lay its wants before you, the representatives of the authority of the State, and the guardians of its interests, and ask from you such action as the case demands.

APPROPRIATIONS REQUIRED.

Appropriations are needed as follows : 1. For the Agricultural Department. F o r barns and other farm buildings for the experimental and stock farms ; for houses for farmer and farin laborers ; for fences, drainage, wells, windmill, teams, tools, seeds, roads, bridges, shelter and fruit trees, and for stock of several breeds and varieties, $38,000. 2. For the Horticultural Department. For horticultural buildings and structures; for house for gardener; for barn and tool house; for teams and implements; for fences, underdraining and roads; for fruit and forest trees for the orchards, forest tree plantations and shelter belts, and for shrubs, plants and seeds of all sorts, $22,000. 3. For the Mechanical Department. Whatever may be done at branch institutions, the Trustees regard it as vitally important that some considerable