Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 612]

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572

History University of Illinois

to the usefulness and even long existence of the Society. Consequently, a permanent location must soon be decided upon. Provided the Agricultural University has a location at all central, with its experimental farm, its agricultural museum, its library, and all its other appendages, so interesting to the farmer, is it at all probable that the fairs of the State Society will not have a location in its vicinity? We believe we speak the sentiments of every farmer of the State in saying that it should be so. The institution proposed would forifi a center around which everything interesting to the farmer would gather. Young men from all quarters of the State would assemble here for instruction. They enlist the interest of relatives and neighbors. Where one now visits the county scores would be attracted by this most important object of interest and curiosity. By thus creating an important center every material interest of the county would be promoted to a degree almost beyond calculation. Few persons are fully aware of the effect of public institutions, established on permanent basis, in enhancing the value of real property in their vicinity. What would Morgan County be with no State institution, no college, no seminary—nothing to distinguish it from other counties of the State? Blot out all these, and does any reflective mind doubt that real estate would depreciate at least twenty-five per cent? Yet the proposed institution will, in its natural annual disbursements, equal them all combined, to say nothing of the stimulus given to trade in the erection of buildings, the influx of visitors, and the other large revenues, either directly or indirectly arising from its establishment. It will largely increase the population of the county and thus relieve the burdens of taxation. Even foreign immigration will be stimulated by the chain of institutions established by the terms of the act of Congress. Their results being annually published by the Bureau of Agriculture at Washington, the present system of international exchange will bring them before the public mind of Europe, and the advantage of our State as the home of the emigrant will become known to thousands who would otherwise remain in ignorance. Those who pass the State Normal University at Bloomington, observe that a new, thriving, and populous town is growing up almost under its shadow. The institution itself has mainly created i t Yet this instance affords