Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1906 [PAGE 292]

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UNIVEKSITY OF ILLINOIS.

TRANSPORTATION TO A T T E N D I N S T A L L A T I O N

[Sept. 12

EXERCISES.

T h e President of the Board received from Dr. Steele, Actuary of the College of Medicine, the following t e l e g r a m :

CHICAGO, September 12, 1905.

#. A. Bullard, President. Will the Board authorize transportation for the College of Medicine faculty and students to installation exercises paid out of undivided funds?

D. A. K. STEELE.

M r . McLean moved that the Board authorize the transportation of College of Medicine faculty and students and of faculty and students of College of Dentistry to attend the installation exercises and the payment of the cost of the same out of undivided funds, on presentation of a detailed statement of railroad fares showing how many attended said exercises. T h e vote on this motion was as follows: Ayes, Messrs. Bayliss, McLean, Bullard, Kerrick, Davison, and M r s . E v a n s ; nays, M r s . A l e x a n d e r ; not voting, M r s . B u s e y ; absent, Governor Deneen and Messrs. Abbott, Barber and McKinley.

P R O M O T I O N OF P H O S P H A T E M I N E S .

T h e special committee appointed to consider this matter at the meeting of March 14, 1905, presented the following report, which w a s accepted: To the Board of Trustees: Your special committee* appointed March 14, 1905, "to ascertain and report the facts of the rumored imprudent connection of any person responsible for the good name of the University with the promotion of certain phosphate mines in Tennessee," respectfully submits the following: We find: 1. That, some time in June, 1904, Dr. Cyril Gf Hopkins, Professor of Agronomy in the Agricultural College of the University, purchased $1,500 in bonds of the New York and St. Louis Mining and Manufacturing Company, a corporation organized in New York with a capital stock of one million dollars, and an authorized bond issue of $500,000—paying $1,500 in cash therefor, and receiving as a stock bonus, in addition to the bonds thirty shares, ($3,000) of capital stock from the Treasury stock, and also received from a Mr. Coburn, then the general manager of said Mining & Manufacturing Company, four hundred and seventy shares of his personal stock in the company. That on or about the same time Professor Eugene Davenport, Dean of the Agricultural College and Director of the Experiment Station, purchased one $500 bond, and received ten shares of the stock. That at sundry times, others who share with Dr. Hopkins and Dean Davenport the responsibility for the investigation of Illinois soils became financially interested in the same company. 2. That these purchases of stock in the said New York & St. Louis Mining and Manufacturing company were made nearly two years after the published statements in bulletins and circulars of the Experiment Stations as well as in many public addresses of the need of phosphorus for the preservation and improvement of Illinois soils. 3. That both Dean Davenport and Professor Hopkins justify this connection with the said company on the ground—briefly stated—that it had been found that the element of phosphorus is deficient in most Illinois soils, is greatly needed, and that these mirchases, which together with others, by persons not connected with the University, resulted in the control of about ten thousand acres of phosphate land in Tennessee by Illinois men, justified