ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



267 



I hold to be the aims of this univ ersaty. And we hope to attain them, 

 not by a less extensive and thorough course of instruction than is given 

 in other universities:, but by a siomewhat different course and more es- 

 pecially by emphasizing from the beginning to the end those studies and 

 sciences which look away from literary and professional life and toward 

 the pursuits of the agriculturalist and the artisan." 



Congress in 1862 made a liberal grant of land scrip to each state of 

 the union for the endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one 

 college in the several states accepting the benefits of the grant, whose 

 leading object should be to teach such branches of learning as related to 

 agriculture and the mechanic arts, without excluding other scientific and 

 classical studies, and including military tactics, in order to promote the 

 liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several 

 pursuits and professions of life. 



This act of Congress was the origin of our university. The legisla- 

 ture of Illinois by an act providing for the organization and mainten- 

 ance of the Illinois Industrial University re-enacted the act of congress in 

 identical words. 



The State of Illinois might have organized and provided for the 

 maintenance of a university of the established or general sort, having 

 colleges of law, medicine, etc., etc., including a college of agriculture 

 and mechanic arts, but she did not, and has not. The perfectly obvious 

 intent of the legislature was to establish a peculiar university, contra- 

 distinguished from that other kind, in that its leading studies should re- 

 late to agriculture and the mechanic arts, other classical and scientific 

 studies being permissable whenand to the extent that they might sub- 

 serve the single great purpose, namely, the thorough and liberal and 

 complete education of the farmer and the artisan; this end and purpose 

 being accomplished, the whole purpose of the university is accomplish- 

 ed. It was deemed by the founders that there were enough of the uni- 

 versities of the other kind and that more were not needed. If no need 

 in '67 of establishing a university of the general sort, what need now can 

 there be when within the borders cf our state there is building by private 



