Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 112]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

86

History University of Illinois

r

time, my friends, that you had your Normal School, whether we ever get an agricultural department to it or not Let us take hold together and obtain it, in such form as you may, on the whole, think best."40 Turner's letter secured for the normal school measure the cooperation of his friends, without which, normal school men have admitted, their success would have been impossible. It was generous, too, for the college fund which the university men might with justice have insisted should be left until they secured a charter for their university, was given over to the normal school; this at a time when it was by no means certain that ah endowment could be secured from congress for the industrial

.,

J

i

i

university. It should not be understood from what has just precededthat Turner was giving up all this without any well defined scheme of carrying through the industrial university plan. In fact it was his plan to help establish the state normal school and later to add to it the industrial university. This view is supported by a letter of Simeon Francis, corresponding secretary of the state agricultural society, to W. A. Pennell written only a few weeks after Turner's letter to the state teachers' association. Francis wrote: " I saw Mr. Turner a fortnight since. I understood him, now, to be in favor of a State Normal School, and when that was established to perfect it connecting with it our State Industrial University project.' ?5° Immediately following the state teachers' association meeting in Chicago, the normal school men and university men did take hold together as Turner advised and because now they could present a united front to the state legislature they obtained in short time the passage of an act establishing the "Illinois state normal university." This act which was approved February 18, 1857, gave the interest from the seminary and college funds to the maintenance of the newly created institution.51 Further than this the state made no appropriation for the new instituFor entire letter see Illinois School Beport, 1886-1888, p. xc. "Francis to Pennell, January 26, 1857, Pennell manuscripts. "For the history of the bill see Illinois School Reports, 1885-1886; 1887-1888, lxxvii, clxxxiv.

tt

[.

In

*