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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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272 History University of Illinois CHAPTER XI THE ILLINOIS INDUSTRIAL UNIVERSITY ORGANIZES FOR WORK Two utterly dissimilar groups of men had now done their work for the industrial university. The first, with Jonathan B. Turner at the head, had fought valiantly and intelligently for an idea; the second, with Clark R. Griggs at the head, had fought dauntlessly and shrewdly for a political plum. The Turner group felt when the industrial university fell into the hands of the Griggs group which secured its location, that its work had been lost, that the fund which would have meant so much for the education of the industrial classes would be dissipated. The university now passed on to the tender mercies of a third group— the first board of trustees, with the first regent of the university, John Milton Gregory, at its head. To the industrial men, it was cause for foreboding that many members of the newly appointed board of trustees belonged to a particular religious denomination and especially disastrous that the regent, op president, was a minister of that denomination. The reason for this attitude is found in a statement made by Turner to the Bloomington convention of 1860, to the effect that to place a clergyman at the head of an agricultural college would be as serious a blunder as to place General Scott with his vivid heaven-and-hell-searching vocabulary at the head of a theological seminary.1 And now this very thing had come to pass in Illinois. It had happened, too, not by accident or coincidence b u t " b y ways that were dark and by tricks'I more or less "vain." According to law, the board of trustees, consisted of one trustee from each congressional district, thirteen in all, and five from each one of the three grand judicial divisions of the state. After appointment by the governor, it was noted that the members displayed remarkable unanimity upon one point— the denomination of their religion. A considerable proportion Chicago Weekly Times, Jane 27, 1860. L l fm i fflm
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