Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1888 [PAGE 208]

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HTSTOEICAL ADDRESS, TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY.

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believe to the general satisfaction of those concerned. They were lively issues in their time; they are mostly dead now, and so let them remain. The period since 1880 has been marked by no large undertakings, like the authorization and construction of a large building, but some enterprises of less moment have been carried through successfully. Financial affairs received early and careful attention. Up to 1881, the legislature had made appropriations for buildings only, and for some special purposes, as library, apparatus, museum, or shops. At that session the Trustees resolved to ask, in addition to the usual sums, for $10,000 per annum for the expenses of instruction. The sum named was cut down to about half and then allowed. The next legislature was asked for $14,000 for the same purpose, and the grant was made. The next legislature granted $12,000, and the last legislature $16,000 per annum for the same purpose. In 1884 the opportunity seemed favorable for selling the lands of the University lying in Nebraska, amounting to something over 9,000 acres. By judicious management, and the proceeds of this sale, the endowment fund has been raised since that time from about $320,000, as it was before, to upwards of $450,000, all safely and carefully invested. In 1885 application was made to the legislature to change the name of the University, and to give it the name it now bears, The University of Illinois. The application was contested very bitterly, especially in the senate, but was finally granted, and the name has been borne with quiet dignity since the first of July of that year. Without doubt, important benefits have already resulted from that so long desired change, and greater good will result in the future. The University has largely extended the knowledge of itself among the people of the State, through its alumni, through its students, and through the efforts of its officers in visiting and addressing gatherings of the people, convened for a great variety of purposes. These addresses have concerned all the vital topics of the times, not political or denominational. For example, the number of agricultural, educational, and other gatherings attended during the past year, by members of the University Faculty, is certainly more than one hundred, and the number of ad dresses given has been more than two hundred. The University has made large exhibitions of its technical work; six months at the State house in Springfield; sixteen months at the expositions at New Orleans; at the great educational displays at Madison, Wisconsin, and at Chicago; at the State fairs, and in many minor instances. Among the material improvements, a few may be enumerated: The purchase of ground adjoining the University park, extending the front to the next street; the purchase of ground, extending the arboretum to the street railway; the adornment of the Uni-