Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - Early History of University (1916) [PAGE 24]

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the Natural History Building, but excluding this, the gain was $51,700, or 203 per cent. 1 Before President Peabody's administration, all state appropriations had been clearly for specified purposes and exclusive salaries for instruction. At the legislative session of 1881, the trustees resolved to ask in addition to the usual sums, for an appropriation for the current expenses of instruction. The legislature granted the sum of $11,400 to help cover the amount of the loss suffered by the University because of the reduction in the interest on its investments. 1 The next legislature was asked for $14,000, for the same purpose, and the grant was made. During the biennial periods which followed, the sums of $24,000, $32,000," and $40,000 were allowed, respectively. Appropriations for buildings were small, and were slow in coming. After much persuasion and political wire pulling on the part of the Regent and his local aids, $10,000 was secured for a Drill Hall in 1889. This caused great rejoicing. During the year the students purchased and placed in the Drill Hall $125 worth of gymnastic apparatus, the money being for the most part the proceeds of an athletic entertainment given the year before in Champaign. Those who at that time wished to practice in the gymnasium paid 50 cts. a term for a ticket, and with the money so secured, instructors were employed from among the students. At the next General Assembly, Eegent Peabody, almost unaided by others connected with the University, succeeded in winning sufficiently the good will of the legislators to cause the passage of a bill carrying $70,000 for a new Natural History building. I n 1887, a law was passed making membership in the Board of Trustees elective, at a general state election, • and restoring the Superintendent of Public Instruction as an ex officio member, thus there are today three ex-officio and nine elective members of the Board. The change in the manner of election helped materially to bring the institution before the people of the state. I t also made it possible for women to serve on the Board. None became members, however, until November, 1904, when Mrs. Lucy L. Flower was elected. I t is interested to note that she received many times the number of votes that have been cast for any other woman as a candidate for office in this state.* While she was the first woman regularly elected a member of the Board, Mrs. Julia Holmes Smith really served a short time before her, having been appointed by the Governor to fill an unexpired term. In 1884 the opportunity seemed favorable to begin the sale of tlie a,000 acres of land located in Nebraska, and by judicious management the endowment fund was thus raised from about $320,000 to upwards of $450,000.' The sale of this land stretched out over a period of twenty-five years, the last being sold only in 1909. The sale of the land in Minnesota began at a somewhat later date, and all is now sold. The total endowment fund received by the University up to June 1, 1916, from the sale of its land scrip amounted to $649,012. 91. The pressing need for runds and the dislike for paying taxes upon this land caused much of it to be sold a t a very low price. I n 1887 the federal government again took up the work it had Degun in 1862. By the passage of the Hatch Act, approved March 12, of that year, the national government appropriated $15,000 per annum to each state for the purpose of estab1 Alumni p. 211. 2 Rep. of »Rep. of ^Minutes "Hep. of

Quarterly, Vol. V, No. 3, July, 1910, Makers of the Univ., by T. J. Burrill, Univ. of 111. 1882, p. 182. Univ. of 111., 1888, p . 211. of Education of Chicago, June 28, 1911. Univ. of 111., 1888, p . 2 1 1 .