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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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History of the Champaign "Elephant" Springfield Correspondence of the Times. 507 Springfield, III, March 20. Aren't you pretty hard on the Champaign college " r i n g , " particularly since we have been entirely spooned out of the university skillet? Why not hear reason, and allow me, a member of the " r i n g " to give you a straight out account of the whole business? By so doing you will give Brother Gregory, the regent, the finance and faculty committees and the trustees, a "pou sto" —which is Dutch for "where to stand"—when these gentlemen undertake the work of organizing and setting the university machinery in motion. THE URBANA AND CHAMPAIGN MALE AND FEMALE INSTITUTE So, to begin at the beginning:—Some six or seven—it may be eight—years ago, two men, hailing from Aurora, 111., Messrs. Babcock and Stoughton, appeared at the county seat of Champaign, and awoke the town from its slumbers by proposing a grand educational scheme, which was to buy up a tract of prairie between the towns of Urbana and West Urbana, for $50 to $100 per acre, as the case might be, lay it off into lots; sell them at the rate of from $500 to $1,000 per acre; and on the difference between what they gave for the land and what they sold the lots for, build, endow and run the Urbana and Champaign male and female institute. They instanced the success of such a speculation at Aurora, Kane county, 111., and claimed as much for it as "the ring" now claim for the Illinois Industrial University, It would raise the price of lands and lots, bring in population and capital, and put Champaign up before the world "like a city on a hill which cannot be hid." PROGRESS OF THE ENTERPRISE. Well, (I was residing in Champaign county at that time, and have been there, off and on, ever since) I went into the thing—in fact we all went into it, bald-headed; and between coaxing, arguing, humbugging and bullying, we soon got up steam, and soon after we were blowing it off a-howling. We let mB^^S^KKm
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