Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 25]

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History University of Illinois

Therefore the idea of a land grant for education wag not new; 1 its application to common schools and to universities was not new, but there was in the proposal of Jonathan B. Turner, put forth in 1851, an element that was entirely new. It was the project of setting aside public lands to support industrial universities in each state, old and new, and particularly a system of universities or agricultural and mechanical colleges; the land to be located wherever the state pleased on the public domain. This never before had been proposed. An idea, like a tree, is known by its fruits. This one, then, must have been sound, amazingly vital, for the system it proposed has developed into the largest group of higher educational institutions in the world with a common origin. It was proposed by an Illinois man, Jonathan B. Turner; it was advanced, fought for and developed by a faithful group of Illinois men; in 1862 more than a decade after its first proposal, it was made the basis of an act known as the Land Grant Act, signed by an Illinois man in the president's chair, Abraham Lincoln. This act provided that the federal government of the United States should make a grant of public lands to the various states for the purpose of establishing in each of the states that accepted the proposition, an agricultural and mechanical college. From this has sprung the great system of public institutions for the higher education of the people along agricultural and mechanical lines. This proposal, although in its definite announcement the work of one man, came as the result of years of consideration on the part of many men. That the need for industrial education was so keenly felt was the natural result of certain inventions and discoveries; certain intermingling of peoples. By these things men had been led to expect the marvelous. The popular mind was eager for information concerning science and its application. Already the physical sciences, notably geology and chemistry, though scarcely half a century old, had revolutionized certain of the arts, and, when applied to agriculture had produced results that recalled Aladdin and his wonderful lamp. Discov*For a discussion of the origin of the attempt to secure federal land grants for the aid of higher education see below, p. 156.