Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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134 History University of Illinois The bitterest opposition came from the classical and theological colleges. Upon the occasion of the Springfield convention in 1852 certain "guests by courtesy," representatives and advocates of the established educational order, undertook to hold the new plan and its advocates up to ridicule. Being admitted to the debate they persisted in hurling at the speakers a volley of abstract and classical questions thinking to reveal the ignorance of the men who sought to establish this new university, styled industrial. Turner arose and answered the questions with a dignity and courtesy entirely lacking in those who asked them. When they had ceased to question, he in his turn questioned them upon the practical affairs of the day and then indeed an ignorance truly amazing was revealed. Having reduced them to utter confusion he frankly told them what he thought of their behavior as invited guests. They were glad to make a hasty and unceremonious exit !9 His plan was widely read and had a decided influence in other states. In 1853 he wrote: " O u r friends in New York have already reprinted our remarks—without honoring them with quotation marks—and thus, with our stolen thunder aroused their industrial population and called for munificent endowments for an industrial university. She has already her funds] and her university is in full blast and now calling upon her people on this basis for a second munificent endowment for the same end. "Michigan many years ago established a State Agricultural College but she has never made any effort for Agricultural colleges outside the boundaries of her own state." 1 0 During the years that Turner was carrying on his campaign for industrial education he was active in other public affairs. In 1846 Dorothy Dix came to Jacksonville to investigate the condition of the insane in that part of Illinois. She witnessed barbaric and ignorant treatment of this unfortunate class and' at the next session of the legislature she went before it and told what she had seen. "Belated by close friends and co-workers of Turner ,0 Prom address "AfiUennium of Labor." 1
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