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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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236 History University of Illinois who supported it. The tone was undoubtedly bitter, the language at times decidedly strong and the statements in spite of prejudice uncomfortably near the truth. Among the leading charges against Champaign county were: that it professed a desire to keep the funds undivided and then in order to secure votes from Chicago and Egypt it violated its pledge, that it was interested in industrial education only for the purpose to foist on the state the "elephant"—the result of a speculative scheme that had failed, that it had tried to bribe Turner by offering to elect him regent and thus get him to betray the agriculturists, that it had indulged in log-rolling in regard to the location of the state capital, a branch of the insane asylum, and a canal and river scheme, that it employed a "slush" fund to buy up correspondents of the press, editors, legislators and others needed, and that it had greatly overvalued its bid to the state as the report of a legislative committee showed. In the long report there is only one hopeful note and that is found in the last paragraph in which the author wrote: "But we do not, after all, in the least despair of the great and good cause of popular Industrial Education. These western states must and will learn to organize and control institutions so indispensable to their prolonged republican existence and life and power." 19 The interval between the passing of the supplementary act of March 8, 1867, and June 1, 1867, within which Champaign county had to make good her titles and get the approval of the people of the county to the bond issue of $100,000 was critical and had possibilities of disaster. There were serious opponents to the project within Champaign county Js own borders and there were those without who would gladly have humiliated Champaign. The publication of a "History of the Champaign 'Elephant/ by One of the 'Ring' " in the Chicago Times just a week or two before Champaign county was to vote on the bond issue was calculated no ddubt to cause dissension in the ranks and if possible defeat the plan.20 It pretended to be an expose by a member of the " r i n g " who, disappointed by his failure to "The report in full is given in appendix, p, 492. "Chicago Times, March 21, 1867, and printed in full below p, 506.
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