Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Ag Building [PAGE 27]

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including- military tactics, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life. The act of congress was the origin of our university. The legislature of Illinois by an act providing for the organization and maintenance of the Illinois Industrial University re-enacted the act of congress in identical words. The State of Illinois might have organized and provided for the maintenance of a university of the established or general sort, having colleges of law, medicine, etc., including a college of agriculture and mechanic arts, but she did not, and has not. The perfectly obvious intent of the legislature was to establish a peculiar university, contra-distinguished from that other kind in that its leading studies should relate to agriculture and the mechanic arts, other classical and scientific studies being permissible when and to the extent that they might subserve the single great purpose, namely, the thorough and liberal and complete education of the farmer and the artisan; this end and purpose being accomplished, the whole purpose of the University is accomplished. It was deemed by the founders that there were enough of the universities of the other kind, and that more were not needed. If no need in '67 of establishing a university of the general sort, what need now can there be when within the borders of our state there is building by private beneficence, without charge to any tax payer, what will with scarcely a doubt become the most completely equipped and the most comprehensive in its round of learning and the most richly endowed university in the world. About three years ago, .when this University had been here more than thirty years; when in all there had been expended upon it $4,000,000 or $5,000,000, the Illinois Farmers' Institute appointed a committee to visit the University and see how it was faring with agriculture here. The committee made its visit and investigation and reported that they found an agricultural plant worth about $7,000— $7,000 I Shades of the founders 1 Excuse us farmers for what we could not help and forgive us for what we could have helped but did not. But, my friends, I doubt very much if Turner and Bateman and Gregory and their co-laborers would have any harsh words