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Caption: Dedication - Engineering Hall (1894) (and Inauguration of President Draper)
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EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:
•j6 U M \ i RSI IV (il I I I INOI . shall to-ni tit dedicate to iI uses the b H building up on t j, < campus, erected, as il must have been, by the munifii ,. 0 | the state and not by the avails of th national act. Tl„ facts, taken in connection with the military battalion which escorted us to this place, with all the equipment of war ;i \ all the martial bearing of veteran soldiery, ai abundant proof that the purpose of the state and the plan of the Unr rsity have been in touch and accord with the spirit and aim of the act of congress. More than this: T h e purpose of the act was wise, and it has been carried out with genuine approval, for there was no part of the country where that purpose was more in touch with the circumstances and purposes of the people than in Illinois. PROGRESS OF A GENERATION. But everywhere in the land circumstances have been modified, in the intervening generation. It has been strikingly so here. The multiplication of the people has been phenomenal. The industrial development has been unprccedent. 1. Knowledge has accumulated to an unexpected degree on the industrial and commercial side of life. Enterprise has intensified. It wdl be still more so. The people are not poor and helpless; they are rich and strong. Your farm lands, the richest in the world, have advanced from *io or $ 2 o to Sho or $80 per acre. They have scarcely to be touched to yield gr t harvests. Your coal beds are inexhaustible. Innumerable industries call loudly for men skilled in mechanics, for managers and directors, and gxve remunerative emyloyment (in t public works call for engineers of all classes. The hands ,,' • not going back on the dial in Illinois. No one would hav< the courage to undertake to set the limits which will b< reached in the ensuing generation. The necessity |,, r ' ing in scientific agriculture and in the mechani< never greater than now. Those fields were nev«r • .T u * 4.1. 1 • ° '•'viiiim as now. c u t other necessities have arisen Otl,, r f
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