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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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Men Who Led 158 it in real estate where he invested so shrewdly that by 1836 he was accounted a rich man. He was driven back to the law for a few years by the financial troubles of 1837, but in 1844 he left it definitely. He was by nature an upbuilder of desolate places. He could look over the prairie and in his imagination see the steel rails, the spires, the big smoke belching chimneys that meant humanity's progress. He felt the worth of the broad acres. He knew that, trapped in the unplowed bosom of the prairies, was wealth that would magnificently support an energetic people. He devoted himself earnestly to the upbuilding of the corner of the earth that he had chosen for home. With his own hands he planted trees, for the prairie to him seemed to beg for trees, by his own efforts he furthered every movement that promised a better community life. It was through his shrewdness and labor that Bloomington obtained the normal school, through his hard work that McLean county made the largest bid for the industrial university. As Frances Milton Morehouse in "The Life of Jesse Pell" has given a detailed account of his activities, nothing will be attempted here, beyond this brief acknowledgement that he deseives a place among the men who led. JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL The agriculturists in entrusting their plan for industrial education to Justin S. Morrill made a wise choice. Morrill was emphatically a man of the people, one who through his own experience knew the darkness of ignorance in which the work of the world was accomplished. His life record is remarkable. He was a plain shop-keeper and farmer for the first forty-four years of his life, yet when he died December 27,1898, he. had spent half his life in congress having been six times elected to the house and six times to the senate. He came from Vermont, a state that sent eminent lawyers and jurists to congress, yet he, a man of scant schooling, * the son of a blacksmith, had at his death been in public service for a longer consecutive period than any man in the history of the country. He was not an orator yet he was heard more
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