Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 109]

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Activity Illinois Industrial League

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complished. Turner gave more time to his personal business which had suffered much during the last two years on account of his work for the league. He was, in fact, spending much time in perfecting and in testing out a corn planter which he had invented. During the summer Murray wrote occasionally for the newspapers; his articles were generally concerned directly or indirectly with the subject nearest his heart, industrial education; on one occasion however, he composed for the Prairie Farmer an able defense of Turner *s work in introducing the osage orange as a hedge in Illinois. As early as June they began to plan for events six months in advance. They were concerned as to who would succeed Ninian W. Edwards as state superintendent when his term expired. The name of W. H. Powell of LaSalle had been mentioned in that connection. They proceeded by correspondence to find out how Powell stood but with little result apparently until a meeting of the state teachers' institute the following December. Meantime in October the state fair was held in Chicago at which the industrial university movement was discussed before nearly a thousand farmers and mechanics. Among the speakers were George L. Lumsden and *C. B. Denio known as the "Mississippi brick layer;" both these men had been friends of this movement as members of the legislature of 1853 that had passed the land grant resolution petitioning congress for a grant to endow industrial universities. An exciting incident on the occasion of the state fair meeting was an interruption by a politician by the j name of John Wentworth. The meeting promptly silenced Wentworth and proceeded to pass resolutions endorsing the objects of the industrial league and called upon the legislature to prepare a system for the education of farmers and mechanics in the line of their own pursuits.44 The state teachers' institute that closed its session in Springfield December 29, 1855, was an unusually important one. The State Register reported that a large proportion of the most earnest and distinguished teachers in the state were present and that they took hold of matters in a way that promised much for the future.45 Addresses were given by N. W. Edwards, state super"Chicago Tribune, October 19, 1855. "Illinois Weekly State Register, January 3, 1856.