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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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Illinois Plan for Land Grant Colleges B7 " W i t h these sentiments deeply impressed on our hearts, and on the hearts of many of our more enlightened fellow citizens, your memorialists will never cease to pray your honorable bodies for that effective aid which you alone can grant* Respectfully submitted, By order of the Committee of the Convention, J . B. TURNER, CJiairman."*1 This memorial was explanatory of and supplementary to the Granville plan. I t added the important proposal that an endow- ment be made by congress to each of the states in the union for industrial universities. Naturally this made the proposition of national interest and consequence. I n the same paragraph with the statement in regard to a grant of land the memorial declared that eminent citizens and statesmen in other states had expressed their readiness to cooperate with Illinois in the plan of appeal to congress. The Illinois movement for industrial education was gathering headway, although in June, 1852, it could not get a dozen men in the legislature to look with patience on its plans. 22 Great political events a few years later and the tremendous shock of civil war following hard upon them obscured the work of these early pioneers. The following facts, gathered from many sources demonstrate how far the knowledge of this plan went within twelve months after its public announcement. Immediately following the Granville convention one thousand copies of Turner ?s plan were printed by order of the convention and distributed free to the press and to influential citizens and officials throughout the country. The Prairie Fanner published the proceedings of the Granville convention in January, 1852, the plan in February and an editorial on the same general subject in March. The Cultivator, published at Albany, New York, in its April issue, 1852, stated that it had received a pamphlet from the pen of Mr. J. B. Turner presenting in a clear, vigorous style the arguments in favor of an industrial university.23 ^Turner, Industrial Universities for the People, p. 35. "Illinois State Agricultural Society, Transactions, 5:37. The legislature changed its attitude six months later for reasons that will be stated* "Cultivator, April, 1852.
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