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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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380 History University of Illinois that shall be so endowed and so planned that it can command the very highest order of talent, and teach all the branches of science and every useful knowledge. For a beginning and a permanent support it was suggested that a certain per cent of the revenue derived from the Illinois central railroad should be devoted to its support and maintenance. He went on to explain that both the normal school and the industrial university would be parts of the proposed larger institution. His disappointment in the industrial university crops out: " I t is a certainty," he said, "that the Industrial University cannot under its present management and in the direction in which it has been conducted, fulfill all the grand hopes and expectations that were incited at its conception and inauguration." He was sure that it would confound any man to tell wherein the industrial university differed from or excelled the ordinary college, but, Turner finally averred, "as a coordinate branch of the great University, where should be gathered the finest intellects in the various departments of instruction, where there shall be abundant apparatus and cabinets, and where narrow minds shall not rule, and bigotry find no home, its grand scope, end, and aim may be attained." 10 Jesse M. Fell also addressed a memorial to the convention the last day of January, 1870, as a representative of the Illinois state teachers' association. He urged the establishment of a university which should be in fact a "universal school" where all branches of learning and the professions should be taught. Anything that fell short of this large conception " a t least in its scope and constitution is alike unworthy of us as a people and of the age in which it is our privilege to live." 20 He suggested that such a university be supported by setting aside the onetenth part of the two mill tax but not until after the existing state debt was extinguished. Fell gave freely of his time and enthusiasm in the attempt to bring the proposed institution into reality, but the plan was not incorporated in the new constitution. Oppressing the future with a financial burden seemed manifestly unjust to certain members of the convention; other "Prairie Farmer, January 8, 1870. "Life of Jesse Fell, p. 80, Frances Morehouse.
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