Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 263]

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Struggle for Location 1865-1867

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by which it was endowed would have been frittered away among some twenty or more of these colleges, catholic and protestant, to no good purpose whatever; for the funds so divided could neither have done them, nor anybody else any real good. Moreover, if I do not distinctly remember meeting each of the authors of this strange report at Springfield, at different times, on this same errand for funds, I certainly dreamed it so very distinctly that it seemed a reality to me ever since, and I presume many others can testify that they have had the same remarkable dreams. Now, if this is what these gentlemen call 'silent, dead and sleeping," etc., I hope, for Heaven's sake, they will wake up this winter; for I am carious to see what they will do when they are wide awake, alive and kicking! If ever a single dollar of State school funds has ever gone out of the State Treasury that these same friends of the old colleges have not been after 'with a sharp stick• I know not where it has gone to. The public papers of those days are filled with notices of their efforts in this regard; so that their present action is only the same old story over again. " Again, in spite of their persistent opposition, and contempt, and ridicule, the friends of the industrial classes have, after years of patient labor, secured this Congressional grant; while their old fogy opponents were everywhere, year after year, denouncing their efforts as 'radical,' 'revolutionary/ 'chimerical,' 'visionary/ 'quixotic/ and 'absurd/ just as they now denounce all legitimate and proper modes of organizing and using the fund, now it is secured. But the fund is now on hand, and it had not had time to cool, after its arrival in Springfield, before these same old college parties, in one shape or another, were on hand, the same as before, to gobble it up. "As already intimated, in my opinion, our existing colleges never had the least shadow of claim to either of those funds, either legal or moral. The first, or old college fund, was given by Congress to endow colleges or universities under state or legislative control, and not under mere denominational or independent corporate control, of whatever kind the states might prefer; or, in other words, it was given to the state as a whole, and not to any independent sect, party, or interest in the state, however good. Against the persistent efforts of these same parties (though made,