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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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First Years of Work 311 plete failure. The men at the head were honest but they failed to comprehend the purpose for which the institution was founded. They attended conventions and agreed with the practical agriculturist in all the abstract theories!, and then went home and did precisely as they had been doing. He believed that the world advanced but that the men at the head of the industrial university were hopelessly stationary, and that a fatal mistake had been made when these men had been placed in their positions. Theologians, according to Turner, had no proper place in the building up of an agricultural college because they were absolutely unable to understand the problems. "The elements of an agricutural education," he said, "are not all found in books but also in observation; and these teachers ought to be men who have made the sciences of agriculture and horticulture their special studies—not mere book scholars."4 In spite of opposition, however, there was sufficient belief in the university and hope for it to guarantee success to the campaign for funds. It was a crucial period in the history of the institution for if further financial assistance had been refused at that time, it probably would have sunk to the level of an insignificant classical school with a few cows and pigs and an ill kept farm to give it an agricultural flavor. As the first appropriation meant so much to the future of the university, the text is given in full. "An act making appropriation for the benefit and completion of the Illinois Industrial University. "Sec. 1. Be it enacted by the people of the state of Illinois represented in the General Assembly, that the sum of sixty thousand dollars be and is hereby appropriated to the Illinois Industrial University, located at Urbana, Champaign County, Illinois, in amount and for the purposes hereinafter set forth viz.: To the barns and other outbuildings for the experimental and stock farm; houses for the farmer and farm laborers; fencing, draining, wells, teams, tools, seeds, bridges, roads, fruit and forest trees, and stock of several breeds and varieties, twelve thousand five hundred dollars per annum for two years. 'Prairie Farmer, January 30,1869.
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