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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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CHAPTER I THE BEGINNING OF THE STRUGGLE FOR INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION Education for the industries came slowly in this country; yet the idea that the schools owed something to the earth and to the workshop, even as they did to law and to medicine, appeared early and was as hard to down as the ghost of Banquo at the feast. However, it is one thing to believe in a new idea to the bottom of one's heart and quite another to believe in it to the bottom of one's pocketbook. The unaccustomed opens both private and public purse slowly. Moreover, those who believed in education for the industries to the extent of spending money for it were confronted with puzzling problems. Who should furnish the money, private individuals or the state? Should the new education be made a part of the schools already existing or should new ones be established? It was not until 1851 that a proposal for education for the industries was made that appealed finally and forcibly to thinking men as entirely practicable. The plan as first outlined described an industrial university that should be established in Illinois and that was needed in each of the states of the union. To this general plan there was added three months later the vitalizing idea that this great proposed system of agricultural and mechanical colleges should be supported by a grant of lands from congress. Now the idea that public lands should be set aside for education had long been approved. By 1854 an aggregate of 4,060,704 acres of land had been granted to fifteen states of the union for the endowment of universities. More than 60,000,000 acres had been appropriated for the establishment of common schools. It had even become a settled policy of the government to set aside in each state as it was admitted a portion of the public lands as a sacred fund for education in that state. 1
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