UIHistories Project: A History of the University of Illinois by Kalev Leetaru
N A V I G A T I O N D I G I T A L L I B R A R Y
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Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Nevins) [PAGE 176]

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160

THE UNIVERSITY FINDS ITSELF

cipal items being for a library, a President's house, a heating plant, an observatory, and $180,000 for operating expenses for the biennium. Senator Dunlap guided the bill through the upper chamber without trouble, but the House leaders demanded the striking out of the appropriation for the library. While Dunlap, through friends in the House, had action deferred, President Draper, Prof. Burrill, and Mr. Pillsbury reached Springfield after an all-night journey in a hack and local train, and at seven o'clock telephoned Gov. Altgeld of the danger to the most important feature of the bill. Altgeld promised to bring the Democrats on the appropriations committee into line if the three would split the Republican opposition, and this was done. Committee action had already been taken to place in the House bill certain small items, as for the observatory, which had been omitted in the Senate bill; and when the library was again provided for, the measure the House received for passage actually carried more than had the measure which Dunlap pushed through the upper body. House leaders were as angry as Altgeld and the University were pleased, and the chairman of the appropriations committee telegraphed Draper for permission to substitute for the library an appropriation for the President's House, which had been emitted. It was of course refused (the House was built from the proceeds of some outlying land), and the appropriation as finally made reached $422,000. The financial affairs of the University were greatly complicated two years later by the defalcation of Treasurer Charles W. Spalding, a Chicagoan of extensive financial interests whom Altgeld had for party reasons seen chosen in Bunn's place. That the University had been exposed to robbery is shown by the report