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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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Statement of Justin 8. Morrill DOCUMENT NUMBER 22 523 Statement by Justin S. Morrill; copy furnished to the University of Illinois by his son. The idea of obtaining a land grant for the foundation of colleges, I think, I had formed as early as 1856. I remember to have broached the subject to Hon, Wm. Hubard, the former member of Congress from the 2d district, Vermont, and he observed that such a measure would all be very well, but that I could not expect it to pass. Where I obtained the first hint of such a measure I am wholly unable to say. Such institutions had already been established in other countries and were supported by their governments, but they were confined exclusively to agriculture, and this for our people with all their industrial aptitudes and ingenious inventions appeared to me unnecessarily limited. If the purpose was not suggested by the well known facts of the existence of Agricultural schools in Europe, it was supported by this fact and especially by constant reflections upon the following points, viz: First, that the public lands of most value were being rapidly dissipated by donations to merely local and private objects, where one State alone might be benefitted at the expense of the property of the Union. Second, that the very cheapness of our public lands, and the facility of purchase and transfer, tended to a system of badfarming, strip and waste of soil, by encouraging short occupancy and a speedy search for new homes, entailing upon the first and older settlements a rapid deterioration of the soil, which would not be likely to be arrested except by more thorough and scientific knowledge of Agriculture, and by a higher education of those who were devoted to its pursuit. Third, being myself the son of a hard-handed black-smith, the most truly honest man I ever knew, who felt his own deprivation of schools, I could not overlook mechanics in any measure intended to aid the industrial classes in the procurement of an education that might exalt their usefulness.
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