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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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Final Period Land Grant Bill 121 stood as trying to forestall in any manner the action of the convention. Being called upon, Turner addressed the convention as follows: " I see an omen for the future in the present gathering. I remember well when we could not get out a single farmer at a convention for this purpose, though repeated calls and drumming had been made, and though the convention was held at the capital during the session of the legislature. The world moves Mr. President. If I might be allowed to use a farmer's homely simile: While sitting in my own dooryard I have seen the immense droves of Missouri cattle coming by, and as the heavy, clustered tramp of the pawing bellowing herd came near, all left their irresistible, onward path; and so now I feel when I see the farmers coming up in masses, bent on the accomplishment of an object—I feel the presence of a mighty, irresistible power." 5 The speaker suggested the necessity of union and the entire abandonment of sectional interests. He expressed the belief that the failure of agricultural institutions heretofore had been due to the attempt to make manual labor schools of them, to entangle them with state and political interests, and to the fact that persons whose tastes and spirit were not agricultural had frequently been placed at their heads. To put an elderly clergyman at the head of an agricultural school was like placing General Scott in charge of a theological seminary. The speaker advocated as a source of endowment the passage of the land grant bill. He deprecated any jealousy of the school located at Chicago, the state was a broad one, and he was only sorry that the noble work commenced at Chicago was not four fold in its extent. He suggested the placing of the proposed agricultural school in charge of men appointed by the two great and permanent organizations who are chosen by the farmers and mechanics at large. At the evening session the resolution committee of five men with Turner as chairman reported a preamble and a series of eight resolutions all bearing upon education in the state and nation. The second resolution is quoted as being of special interest: ^Chicago Weekly Times, June 27, 1860.
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