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Caption: Book - History of the University (Nevins)
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18 THE FOUNDING OF THE UNIVEBSITY emphasized the desirability of a normal department in the University. A few months later a third convention, in Chicago, took still farther steps. It resolved "that this convention memorialize Congress for the purpose of obtaining a grant of public lands to establish and endow universities in every State in the Union " ; and to promote various ends an "Industrial League of Illinois" was formed, with Turner as director. In January, 1853, a fourth convention was held at Springfield, and the Legislature was urged to present a memorial to Congress praying it to appropriate to each State not less than $500,000 worth of land for these universities. The next month the League was chartered, and promptly began to scatter circulars and a pamphlet containing Turner's address and memorials, and to correspond with those interested in industrial education. The national movement was well launched.1 j That Turner's plans found a ready response in many parts of the United States is not strange. Theories of an advanced education differing from that of the traditional academy and college had found embodiment long before in polytechnic schools and manual labor classes. * I t is difficult to exaggerate the intensity of the opposition Prof. Turner had to meet in Illinois. As a member of .the Board of Trustees of the Hospital for the Insane during its construction a t Jacksonville a few years previous he had thwarted the plans of a few " political speculators " to make money out of it and its offices; and this clique, through the Springfield, Jacksonville, and Chicago papers, visited upon him unsparing ridicule and abuse. One of the editors of the Morgan County Journal was attacked .with knife and cane for defending him; and during Prof. Turner's absence in the interests of his educational plans his barn was burnt down, with a loss of about $4,000. The heads of the sectarian colleges were far above such methods, but they treated Prof. Turner with narrowness and bigotry, arguing that all attempts at higher State education were doomed to fa»we» and that they tended to the negation of religion. Turner MSS.
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