Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 432]

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Industrial Universities for the People

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tution. On this occasion, all the professors, and as many of the pupils as are sufficiently advanced, should be constantly engaged in lecturing and explaining the divers objects and interests of their departments. In short, this occasion should be made the trreat annual GALA-DAY of the Institution, and of all the industrial classes, and all other classes in the State, for the exhibition of their products and their skill, and for the vigorous and powerful diffusion of practical knowledge in their ranks, and a more intense enthusiasm in its extension and pursuit. As matters now are, the world has never adopted any efficient means for the application and diffusion of even the practical knowledge which does exist. True, we have fairly got the primer, the spelling book, and the newspaper abroad in the world, and we think that we have done wonders; and so, comparatively, we have. But if this is a wonder, there are still not only wonders, but, to most minds, inconceivable miracles, from new and unknown worlds of light, soon to break forth upon the industrial mind of the world. Here, then, is a general, though very incomplete, outline of what such an institution should endeavor to become. Let the reader contemplate it as it will appear when generations have perfected it, in all its magnificence and glory; in its means of good to man, to all men of all classes: in its power to evolve and diffuse practical knowledge and skill, true taste, love of industry, and sound morality—not only through its apparatus, experiments, instructions, and annual lectures and reports, but through its thousands of graduates, in every pursuit in life, teaching and lecturing in all our towns and villages; and then let him seriously ask himself, is not such an object worthy of at least an effort, and worthy of a state which God himself, in the very act of creation, designed to be the first agricultural and commercial state on the face of the globe? Who should set the world so glorious an example of educating their sons worthily of their heritage, their duty, and their destiny, if not the people of such a state? In our country we have no aristocracy, with the inalienable wealth of ages and constant leisure and means to perform all manner of useful expej^ ments for their own amusement; but we must create our nobility