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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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14 History University of Illinois CHAPTER II THE ILLINOIS PLAN FOB A SYSTEM OF LAND GRANT COLLEGES | In 1849 Daniel Lee of Georgia told the New York agricultural society that up to then nothing had been done in any quarter that showed promise of resulting in a college of agriculture and of the mechanic arts. The facts made dispute impossible. For two years so far as actual achievement was concerned, the situation remained essentially unchanged. Then, on the eighteenth day of November, 1851, a definite, vigorous movement, was begun in Illinois for the higher education of the working classes. The leaders of the movement in Illinois had been watching the movements in other states. They felt that they knew precisely why the efforts in Massachusetts and New York to get state aid for agricultural colleges had just been defeated; why the founding of professorships in applied sciences at Yale and Harvard had failed to appeal to the agriculturists of the country. In fact the Illinois men were inclined to view these professorships satirically. Said the editor of the Prairie Fanner, the leading state agricultural paper published in Chicago: "That was a sort of ' backfiring' such as is practiced upon the prairies when the burning grass is too tall and dry, and so far as we know amounts to little or nothing in meeting the demand." Jonathan B. Turner was still more vigorous in his sarcasm: 4 They have hauled a canoe alongside of their htigej professional steamships and invited all the farmers and mechanics of the State to jump on board and^ sail with them; but the difficulty is, they will not embark. But we thank them even for this pains and courtesy. It shows that their hearts are yearning toward us, notwithstanding the ludicrous awkwardness of their first endeavors $B:M^^^$. The sarcasm of the Illinois men was not that of mere scoffers or of the ignorant. They had acquainted themselves with *Turner, A Plan for an Industrial University, 8.
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