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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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804 History University of Illinois stitutes industrial education seem vague when compared with those of Turner and the agriculturists.37 Possibly it was because he realised as they did not the great difficulties to be met He emphatically avers that the highest culture is compatible with the active pursuit of industry and the richest learning will pay in a cornfield or a carpenter's shop, and that if the people can be convinced of this they will have it. 'Prove that education in its highest form, will 'pay' and you have made for it the market of the world.'jj But just wherein this culture consists, and how it is to be presented to a world willing to pay for it if only said world can be brought to a conviction of its need, does not appear. The newspaper reports of the inauguration vary from fulsome adulation of the new enterprise to open and hilarious disbelief. The Champaign Democrat of March 14,1868, waxes thus enthusiastic over the inaugural: 4 'This may be justly called a magnificent affair throughout; happy in its conception and successful and harmonious in its execution. The substantial feast prepared for the occasion was highly creditable to our citizens, and was destroyed with a relish. "The music—ah, the glorious, delicious music! The enchanting harmony, the inspiring melody, the very soul of sound grandly swelling or sweetly dying away like ?angels' whispers.'' Then came the announcement that the piano which aided so materially in producing this "soul of sound'' was for sale and that "here is a rare chance for some of our citizens to secure and keep among us this chef d'oeuvre of musical art." The Chicago Evening Post of March 12, 1868, viewed the inauguration from a very different angle. The dinner ironically referred to as a "banquet" was, according to the Post's scribe, "gotten up in the highest style of Central Illinois, hog and hominy." Compliments to the faculty of the new institution were expressed in the following terms: "Gentlemen of the Illinois Industrial University the spouting of the spouters cannot save you! Your institution in the hands of a parcel of decayed or otherwise incapacitated preachers, who have not the remotest comprehension of the demands of modern civilization upon the young men of the West, will, for all the higher purposes for which it was founded, be useless; hence a bore and a nuisance." "Ibid, 182.
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