Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1869 [PAGE 50]

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42

Aid Macalister moved that the report and resolution be laid over and published. Carried. The report and resolution are as follows: To the Hon. the Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Chicago, in Common Coun. cil assembled : Your Committee on Finance, to whom was reforred a communication, with preamble and resolution, from Hon. S. S. Hayes, Trustee Mechanical Department State Industrial University, as also communication from S. S. Hayes, J . C. Burroughs, J. M. Yan Osdell, E. L. Brown, and D. S. Hammond, Committee of the Trustees of the Mechanical Department of the Illinois Industrial University ; also seventeen petitions from citizens of Chicago—all of which ask this Council to favorably consider their application to have the Polytechnic College or Mechanical department of the State Industrial University, located in the city of Chicago, with an appropriation of $250,000, by a contribution to the same, having carefully considered the subject, report that your Committee fully indorse the views as set forth in the preamble and resolution referred to them. Your Committee believe that the interests of the mechanics of the Northwest, of which Chicago is the commercial center, demand an institution of this kind for the better development of the arts and sciences in our midst, and believing this, we t h i n k it the duty of this Council, as the legislative body of the City of Chicago, to lend its aid in the manner sought, and we would respectfully ask the concurrence of this Council in the following preamble, and the passage of the resolution herewith. W H E R E A S , The establishment and successful operation in the city of Chicago of a Mechanical or Polytechnic College, for the more thorough education of mechanics in those sciences which are necessary for the attainment of the highest skill in the mechanical arts, would be of great value to the industrial class in the city of Chicago, and to the State at large, and W H E R E A S , Under the acts of Congress, and the General Assembly of the State, the Board of Trustees of the State Industrial University have designated Chicago as the place for the location of the Mechanical or Polytechnic department of that University, subject to the condition that the same be located as near the center of the city as possible ; and W H E R E A S , The county of Champaign has donated to the Agricultural department of said University, county bonds of said county to the amount of $100,000, and other property to the estimated value of $350,000 more, in consideration of the location of said Agricultural Department in said county; and W H E R E A S , There seems to be a defect of power under the city charter for the city to issue bonds for such a purpose at this time, therefore, be it Resolved, by the Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Chicago, in Common Council assembled, That the following proposition be and the same is hereby made to the Board of Trustees of the Mechanical or Polytechnic department of the State Industrial University, to-wit: If and upon condition that the Trustees of said Mechanical department shall permanently locate said de-