University of Illinois

“ The study of science must be grounded in the conception of orderly change, or change in accordance with the laws of evolution.
It is, after all, the presence of scholars that makes the university. It is in such men that the University of Illinois has its existence. It is located neither in Champaign nor in Urbana; it is wherever its teachers may be, wherever its workers have gone. We have met to-day to dedicate its Science Hall. To the future work in this hall we do all honor, but we do not think of it as a new hall, nor a new creation. ”

“ I congratulate the State of Illinois that its university is one university; that its pure and applied science, its literature, history, philosophy, and art are taught in one institution by a united faculty. The best results in any line of education can not be reached without the association of all others. The training of the engineer will be the more valuable from his association with the classical student. The literary man may gain much, and will lose nothing, from his acquaintance with the practical work of the engineer. ”

“ At Chicago University it is called the Department of Household Administration; sixty women undergraduates are specializing in it. At the University of Illinois it is called the Department of Household Science; one-third of all the women in the university are taking courses in it ”

“ The trustees of the institution, who have legislative power only, are the governor, the President of the Board of Agriculture, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, and nine others elected by the people. There were in 1907 more than forty other universities and colleges in the state, the most important being the University of Chicago, North-western University at Evanston, Illinois Wesleyan University at Bloomington, Knox College, Galesburg, and Illinois College at Jacksonville. ”

“ One of our graduates, Miss Ethel J. May, a very strong student, "profited" by the so-called "credit-for-quality" system to such an extent that she shortened her undergraduate period of study by an entire year, receiving her degree with honor. Then she taught for a few years with signal success, later returning for graduate work. For her Master's degree she spent an entire year in study, since the system did not operate in the graduate department. Again she taught with success, later entering the University of Illinois as an applicant for the doctorate. ”

“ In few States has private initiative been more active in establishing higher schools of learning. Thirty-one institutions have assumed the name of ‘college’ or ‘university.’ Besides these there are a large number of professional and technical institutions, more modest in name, but equally well known. Cook County Normal School is one of the best known in the whole country, and the University of Chicago (q.v.) ”

“ Within twenty years every state in the Union had taken advantage of this splendid endowment, either to found a new state university which would comply with the requirements as regards courses of instruction or to establish an agricultural college as an independent institution, or in connection with some already existing institution. Not only do some of the finest state universities like those of California, Illinois, and Minnesota owe their origins to the Morrill Act, but others owe to it their real beginnings as institutions of collegiate grade. ”

“ W. W. Lusk’s Politics and Politicians of Illinois, the Illinois Constitutional Convention (1862) , the Granger Movement in Illinois, and Illinois Railway Legislation and Common Control (University of Illinois Studies) , Street Railway Legislation in Illinois (Atlantic Monthly, vol. xciii.) , are of value for conditions after 1860. The publications of the Chicago Historical Society, of the “Fergus Historical” series, of the State Historical Library, of the Wisconsin Historical Society, also the Michigan Pioneer Collections, contain valuable documents and essays. ”

“ The university owns valuable collections in zoölogy, geology, and other departments, an art gallery, and an excellent collection of historical portraits. The library contains about 60,000 volumes, exclusive of special departmental libraries. The university holds a summer session of nine weeks designed primarily for teachers. It maintains close relations with the high schools of the State through a careful system of inspection and accrediting. It has developed rapidly, and is constantly engaged in scientific investigations bearing upon the interests of the State. ”

“ One of the most noted educational women in America to-day, being president of State Editors' Association of Illinois, the school board of Chicago, having won this latter distinction over several men who had long served as public school teachers, took her degree of A.B., and later, her Ph.D., at the University of Chicago. ”

“ In Ohio, Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, Oregon, Nevada, and Nebraska such institutions exist as Departments of the State University, and, like all its other departments, admit women.
In Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Iowa, Kansas, and Colorado, such institutions, under various names, as “Agricultural College,” “Industrial and Mechanical College,” “College of Applied Science,” etc., enjoy an independent organization, in some States loosely connected with, in others entirely separate from, the State University. ”

“ There should be a free exchange of professors and students between all parts of the country. Then there should be a great national university at Washington or elsewhere frequented by advanced students and professors from all parts of the country and all parts of the world—men who would gladly learn and gladly teach. Harvard, Columbia and Chicago, Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois may be secondary centers, but they should cooperate to establish a super-university, which would have the same relation to existing universities that these should hold to the colleges. ”

“ The university paid under protest, insisting that as an instrumentality of the state of Illinois, and discharging a governmental function, it was entitled to import the articles duty free. At the hearing on the protest, the Customs Court decided in favor of the Government (59 Treas. Dec. 747) and the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals affirmed the decision. ”

“ There are Societies now at the following colleges and universities: Boston University, Brown, California, Chicago, Cincinnati, College of the City of New York, Clark, Colorado, Columbia, Cornell, Denver, Harvard, Hunter, Illinois, Johns Hopkins, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New York University, North Carolina, Ohio State, Omaha, Pennsylvania, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Radcliffe, Rutgers, Texas, Tufts, Valparaiso, Washington, Western Reserve, Wisconsin, and Yale. New Societies are in the process of formation at several other universities. ”

“ Every specialist knows that a man who has spent four years in Taylor University in Indiana or at Blackburn 397University in Illinois, or at Leland University in Louisiana, or at other similar “universities,” will not be nearly so well educated as a man who has been to Yale College or Princeton College or Columbia College. ”

“ Who does not know that protracted, unremitting intellectual labour is always fatal, unaccompanied by corresponding physical exertion; and who cannot perceive that any inducement, be it what it may, which can draw forth the student from his retirement, is invaluable. Such an inducement is the lively interest which the cultivated mind [55] always manifests in the operations of mechanical art.
Illinois College has been founded but five or six years, yet it is now one of the most flourishing institutions west of the mountains. ”

“ ILLINOIS COLLEGE. The oldest collegiate institution of Illinois, founded in 1829 at Jacksonville, Ill., in part through the efforts of the Eastern organization known as the ‘Yale Band.’ The curriculum is arranged on the group system, with elective courses after the freshman year, and leads to the bachelor's and master's degrees. ”

“ The challenges we face as a nation are now more numerous and difficult than when I first arrived in Chicago, but I have no doubt that we can meet them. For throughout my years in Illinois, I have heard hope as often as I have heard heartache. Where I have seen struggle, I have seen great strength. And in a state as broad and diverse in background and belief as any in our nation, I have found a spirit of unity and purpose that can steer us through the most troubled waters. ”

“ When there is such a man for America, the thought which urges her on will be expressed.
Now that I am about to leave Illinois, feelings of regret and admiration come over me, as in parting with a friend whom we have not had the good sense to prize and study, while hours of association, never perhaps to return, were granted. I have fixed my attention almost exclusively on the picturesque beauty of this region; it was so new, so inspiring. But I ought to have been more interested in the housekeeping of this magnificent state, in the education she is giving her children, in their prospects. ”

“ It is to the infinite credit of the State that since the war began there has been no diminution, but on the contrary, an increase in schools, both private and public, in number of pupils, teachers, school houses, and amount of school funds. Of eight thousand two hundred and twenty-three male teachers in 1860, three thousand went to the war, showing that it is among her most intelligent and instructed classes that we are to look for the patriotism of Illinois. ”

“ Nowhere can there be seen fairer landscapes, nowhere richer farms, than here in your own great State of Illinois, a State whose history has been full of illustrious achievements, rich in possibilities, where lived our illustrious sons; a State whose population is intelligent, contented, orderly, and liberty-loving; a State whose development has not yet begun to approach its possible limits; a State having advantages by the location, swept as it is by two of the great waterways of the continent, advantages of access and markets by lake and rail and river unexcelled by any State in the Union ”

“ Universities in general may symbolize the achievement of European civilization—the endurance of which now seems to depend upon soldiers, not gentlemen or scholars; but the University of Chicago, like the city in which it was founded, is almost 100 percent American.
When Chicago got around to culture she was not content to make it hum. She turned out an American brand. It was not merely a "new system of philosophy"—the pragmatism or humanism which William James applauded—but a new orientation of the higher learning itself. ”

“ Men of either wealth or position were still too few to fill its ranks. Energy, ambition talent, were necessarily the standard of admission; and Lincoln, though poor as a church mouse, was as welcome as those who could wear ruffled shirts and carry gold watches. The meetings of the legislature at Springfield then first brought together that splendid group of young men of genius whose phenomenal careers and distinguished services have given Illinois fame in the history of the nation. ”

“ IN traveling over the great fertile prairie State of Illinois, and viewing its many railroads, its many beautiful cities and towns, its school houses, its churches, its broad fields of waving grain, its orchards bending under their load of golden fruit, its vast population of industrious and intelligent citizens, its mills, and its factories, one can hardly realize that nearly all of this great improvement has been made in the last sixty years, but such is the case. ”

“ I do not mean to imply that various departments always collaborated in research—although more of that has occurred at Chicago than anywhere else—but I do say that the large round tables of the faculty club could usually assemble a diversity of specialists who really understood what the other fellow's research was driving at because it was a common objective they all shared. If a university should be a community of scholars, if it should sustain a universe of discourse, then the pre-Hutchins Chicago almost (I say "almost") rang the bell. ”

“ All interested in such a conference are requested to send their names to Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Evanston, Ill., or Mrs. Louise Rockwood Wardner, Cairo, Ill.
Hon. Frank Sanborn, in his annual report to the American Social Science Association, mentioned the formation of a branch society [370] in this State. He said:
Like the State Charities Aid Association of New York, which was organized and is directed by women, the Illinois Association devotes itself chiefly to practical applications of social science, though in a somewhat different direction. ”

“ We begin to expect domestic science and art in the high schools. In Illinois there are 71 high schools in which instruction is offered in one or more of the three great divisions of the Study of Daily Life—Food, Clothing, the Home. In such of these high schools as are within the limits of the city of Chicago there is a four-year Household-Arts course so contrived that the girls who enroll themselves in it, while not neglecting literature, art, and the pure sciences like physics, will spend at least eight hours every week on “Domestic Science” or on “Textiles.” ”

“ As an illustration of what may be done by public patronage, when States are in earnest with their universities, and as strangely contrasting the sluggish fortunes of our own Alma, look at the State University of Michigan. Here is an institution but twenty-five years old, already numbering thirty-two professors and over twelve hundred students, having public buildings equal in extent to those which two centuries have given to Cambridge, and all the apparatus of a well-constituted, thoroughly furnished university. ”