Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 459]

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History University of Illinois

submitted a plan for such an educational institution, which has since been published in pamphlet form. We think the importance of the subject a sufficient apology for allowing the Professor to be heard by a large audience. It is not often that the weak points of an ordinary collegiate education are so clearly exposed, and the necessity of workingmen's universities so plainly demonstrated." He then republishes the plan. See Horticulturist, July 1852, p. 306. Said the editor of the N. York Tribune, in the editorial prefacing his republication of the same plan, "the great idea of a higher or thorough education for the sons and daughters of farmers, mechanics and laborers, is everywhere forcing itself on the public attention. Our race needs instruction and discipline to qualify them for working, as well as for thinking and talking. They need something more than the hireling picks up at haphazard in the course of his daily toils. For want of this knowledge in every department of rural industry, millions of dollars are annually wasted. Prof. J. B. Turner, of Jacksonville, in behalf of a convention at Granville, has put forth a plan of an industrial university, which sets forth the pressing and common need, so forcibly, that we copy the large portion of it."—[N. Y. Tribune, Sept. 4, '52. An editorial in the North American, (the oldest paper in Philadelphia,) on education and agriculture, said to be written by Judge Conrad, says: "We have been gratified by the perusal of an address delivered by Prof. J. B. Turner, of Jacksonville, Ills., before a convention of farmers held in that State, in support of the establishment of a university, in which agriculture and the sciences shall be made a special branch of study. His suggestions are urged with zeal and ability, and his arguments are convincing, as to the need and importance of such institutions. There is no subject more worthy of the highest effort of the human intellect, nor one which has been, till recently, so culpably disregarded, if not condemned. To secure the diffusion and practical application of agriculIII science, it seems necessary that it should be interwoven with g&neral eduction, and its acquisition made an object of early Ipride and animated ambition.