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Please Read and Circulate, 



INDUSTRIAL UNIVERSITIES I 



FOB THE PEOPLE, 



POBLIsnED rS COMPLIANCE WITH RESOLUTIONS OF 



ITHE CHICAGO AND SPRINGFIELD CONVENTIONS, 1 




ANn UNDER THE 



INDUSTRIAL LEAGUE 



OF ILLINOIS; 



JACKSONVILLE: 

PEINTBD AT THE MORGAN JOURNAL BOOK ASD JOB OFFICE. 
1S53. 




BY J. B. TURNER, 

CHAIRMAN op THG COMMITTEE. 




8. H. &G. BoHHETT, Feoria i Daytoh, Qmnty ; S. 

Ghiggs &, Co., and W. W. Danenbowch, Oifitago ; 

and at BooKsroKKS Genehally throiigbout 

the blate— Price lU cenlt, 

The Proceeds at Bales to be applied to t&e Interests of .dt« &idnsli!al taagne 



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Please Read and Circulate. 



INDUSTRIAL UNIVERSITIES 



FOR THE PEOPLE. 



PUBLISHED IS COMPLIANCE WITH RESOLUTIONS OF 



THE CHICAGO AND SPRINGFIELD CONVENTIONS. 



AND UNDER THE 



INDUSTRIAL LEAGUE 



OF ILLINOIS. 



BY J. B. TORNEE, 

CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEi:. 



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PREFACE. 



The reasons for proffering this pamphlet Co the public will be tounil in It 
pi'Dceedings oE the iNDUsTBtAL Conventions, held at Chicago in IS52, and i 
Springfield, 1853. But while the author has endeavored to comply with tlie gei 
eral wish expressed by these conventions, and llie Directors o! the Illinois In- 
nusTRiAL League, it should not be interred that any friends of Ihoseconve 
tioni or of the League are responsible for the particular stalementi or sentimei 
herein expressed. In all these incidental matters, the author alone Is responsibi 
as it was found impracticable before puhlieation to secure even a revision by II 
commitlee, which, had it been possible, was greatly to be desired. 

It will also, be readily seen that it is no part of the design of this work, to n 
tice tbe many and great improveinents and excellencies in our existing systems 
education, but ratlier to call attention to their remaining defects and urge lh( 
as a reason For immediate effort and action in the direction Indicated. 

For a plan of action the reader wili pkiaa refer to tba elaj; jf tU* pamphli 



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INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 



The progress which the people of the United States, and espe- 
cially of our own State, are continually making on the great sub- 
ject of education, must be gratifying to every patriotic and philan- 
thropic mijid;, 

This progress relates to the esds, instrumentalities, and 
MODES of all mental and moral culture, and is moat apparent in 
the condition of our beat Common Schools — at once the pride and 
Itopc of our country. 

The BSD of all education should be the development of a 
TRUE MANHOOD, or the natural, proportionate and healthful culture 
and growth of all tbc powers and faculties oE the human beings 
physical, mental, moral and social; and any system which attempts 
the exclusive, or even inordinate culture of any one class of these 
faculties, will fail of its end — it_will make mushrooms and monks, 
rather than manhood and men. For similar reasons, any system 
of education adapted to the exclusive or unequal and inordinatc 
culture of any one class or profession in the State, is defective i 
it generfttes clans and castes, and breaks in upon that natural 
order, equality and harmony which God has ordained. It wilt 
«reate a concentration of intellectual power in the educated head 
of the body politic — cold, crafty, selfish and treacherous, whioli 
will sooner or later corrupt its heart — will exhaust and overlabor 
and overtask its weak, uncultured and undeveloped, subordinatt- 
powers and organs, and produce a bedlam rather than a kingdom 
en earth — a despotism either of the tyrant, the church or the mob, 
or of all these combined; not a government. 

And this effect will inevitably follow, as sure as God lives and 
reigns, even though a nation write its soil and sea over with parch- 
ment, declarations and manifestoes, and rend air and sky with 
«lamorous shouts of "Equality, Liberty and Fraternity." "E<* 
not deceived : God is not mocked." "That which a man sowetti, 
shall he also reap." 

In former times not very remote from our own day, mere learn- 
ing — book knowledge — Bcbolasticiam, was considered the great 
end of edueafion, andnll such syatema of culture direct the mind 
too much towards books, and too little towards facts. The pupil 
is taught to think of letters and words rather than of thingg and 



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6 ISDTISTRIAL EDUOAIIOS. 

pveuts — to remember on what part o£ the book page he faw the 
forra of words, better than he knows on what part of the world's 
page, the events took'place, if at all. All the way along, from 
a — b, ab, and long a in hate, and a seven years' war at spelling 
up through spelling books, grammars and dictionaries, English, 
Latin and Greek, till he at lasttook his diploma, it was one ever- 
lasting agonism at verbiage, as though God, angels and men — 
the sky above and the earth beneath, were all moonshine ; anil 
spelling, grammar, fa^&— the prime proprieties o£ man's utter- 
ance facile and precise — were the only realities in the universe. 
A real grammar-school-boy of such schools, can <Ma r g no other 
idea than that God made the world oat of the nine parts of speech, 
and in English, at leaet, spelled it all wi'ong. And so throughout 
the whole course, books, books, books, form the great staple and 
instruments and ends of culture ; and the living voice, speaking 
of living facts and presenting living realities to the mind of the 
pupil, but a very small part ot! it. By such methods the mind is 
trained to undue deference to the authority of the book, with little 
capadty to look after the fact — and men's opinions and usages, 
instead of God's laws andordinances govern the world: and gen- 
erally, in those communities where this mere book learning if 
most dominant, the minds of men are most depressed and enslaved 
to tyrant custom. For example— compare Germany and Eng- 
land, and New England and Illinois. It engenders an undue 
deference to mere learned authority, a spirit of effeminate timidity, 
and pedantic semlity, rather than one of true wisdom, true free- 
dom, and true manhood, such as has shone in the prophets, apostles 
and martyrs of every age. 

It does not produce mind, but mere learning — not inlelled, 
but scholarship — notthinkers, but plausible and sophistical deba- 
ters ; schoot^en, (as of old,)who can prove either side of any 
proposition, bat not real men who can discharge the hard side of 
every single daty. 

A proper remedy for such a state of things, wherever it may be 
found, would, of course, consist in drawing our resources of culture, 
less from books and the laws of verbiage, and more from fact! 
and the laws of God. Less from nature distorted into abstractions, 
proposftions, prisms and triangles, as seen in ordinary books, and 
more fi'om nature, as it comes all radiant and instinct with life, 
beauty and glory from the Hand Divine. What a monstrosity wa? 
that which some years since took little boys and girls, not yet 
seven years old, out of God's clear sunshine, away from the bird^ 
and the breezes, the flowers and the trees, and set them, for six 
hours in the day, bolt upright on a wooden bench, to look at big 



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INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 7 

Cotters and triangles made of cotton rags and lampblack!! — and all 
this, only to educate thera!!! 

Wei!,' this absurdity has passed away ; and all others similar to 
it itfc fast departing. 

But the great instrumentalities o£ education are — the family, 
the SCHOOL, the church and the state ; and in order to the best 
results, it is indispensable that order, virtue, wisdom and freedom 
should direct, pervade, enlighten and control eacli and all these 
several departments of human culture with a simultaneous energy 
and power. The apostasy, or comiption, or perversion of any 
one of these is sufficient to cripple and distort, if not to utterly 
annihilate all the good that can be educed from the other three. 
'I'he vanity, iselfishness, pride and vice of the household — the ped- 
antry and folly of the school — the bigotry and superstition of the 
(ihurch, or the tyranny and corruption of the State, are, each one 
of them, adequate to pervert or destroy, in a single generation, 
hU the real good of the other three, if, indeed, the phenomena of 
the existence of such vices in either quarter, does not show a pre- 
tious latent corruption in all departments alike. Hence, a watch- 
i'nl care over all these interests alike, is as indispensable to the 
proper education of pur youth, as it is to their after security in life. 

But in the narrow and pedantic view of the subject, pchools of 
literature and science are usually considered the great, if not the 
5ole instruments of education ; and sometimes, in accordance with 
this view, the brain or the naiud, the mere intellectual powers of 
man, are the only powers really sought to be educated. Wherever 
ibis fatal delusion prevails, the necessary result must be a mon- 
strosity, not a manhood; a monk, rather than a man ; and it will 
he found, at last, to give the world pedants and pettifoggers for 
priests and teachers, rowdies and robbers forjulcrs, and only old 
vices under new names, for all the abandoned and discarded 
f irtues of their forefathers. 

This pedantic and shallow view of the subject of education, alsi' 
leads to another most fatal error in the minds of both the old and 
the young. Instead of regarding education as the great life- 
long process — the great life-business ot every human being hei'e 
«n earth, it limits it to the quarter days of the school-room, and 
«all3 even the most corrupt, effeminate, useless and senseless of 
men, educated, if, forsooih, they have overmastered a certann 
quantum of a prescribed course of mere book-learning, though 
turned loose upon the world without either the capacity to take 
aare of themselves, or the dispositioD to leave the best interests of 
their fellows untouched.* 

*Jeii^ Holbrook, in Uk "NatioMl Era," of June I6tft, il&Ies, ;ba: "in on* 



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8 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

A young boy or girl, under this idea, obtains a smattering oF 
language, literature and science, perhaps, in theschools, and then, 
foraootli, as it is very pertinently and significantly said, "he has 
finished his education." It is, but too otteo, strictly true ; — it i^ 
iimshed;and all true manhood has, also, been crucified in thi- 
process. It is all ended with him, and you have before you your 
plausible sophist,your accomplished idler,or your educated hireling 
— another relentless donkey to hold back the great car of social 
and mor&J progress, and bray at every new idea that dawns upon 
the world for the good of man and the glory of God. 

But motion — progress— is the law of matter and of mind ; and 
all civilization, all true Christianity, all true education and all true 
manhood, are nothing else but one everlasting progress in true 
knowledge, wisdom and virtue. 

It is obvious that the instruction of the schoolroom should br 
constantly based upon this idea. That it should aim to put every 
pupil in such a position that his whole life afterward may be but 
ouij continuous, natural and easy progress from one stage ol: 
mental and moral development and power to another. Nature's 
ord«r and God's law, when observed, is, that the child should be- 
(.■ijma the youth, the youth the man. the man the angel; and so, 
onward and upward forever — ever developing — ever progressing. 



roUege graduates in our country lo the whole population. Every bod? knows.-' 
9:i;.'> lie, "tint llie most deprgred beings in our countrj^ are among those upon 
whom moat is expendedfor their education ; and that thieves, midnight assassin? 
and incendiaries bave come from our schools hj hundreds and thousands." 

If tbis is true, and other prisons show similar statistics, the whole number of 
f,Taduates of colleges in all the prisons, must exceed the relative proportion 
furnished to the same honors by the industrial classes, many h^^ndred per cent. 
Does not tliis denote something wrong in our schemes (or the mere culture oF 
t&e tooeuB and the brain ? But suppose all who have been under the regimen of 
this drill, but never graduated, were reported, the ratio would be even more 
fi'igfitfulif swollen, and we should Rnd that no class of persons disfor^e so great 
an annual peraant into our prisons and almshouses and the drunkard's ignoble 
grave, as those who have attempted to seek a liberal education, while under oui- 
more rational and practical common school system, in which practical knowledge 
is aoueht in connexion with domestic duties and industrial pursuits, the Facts are 
eiactiy the reverse. Has a tree that hears such fruit,t[ue ctirislianity, or heathen 
mjtiiologv at its roots? Is practical duty, or pedantic di»nlay,it3 life and its aim- 
■ne fearful loss of life which these systems of monkish and distorted culture 
annuaity produce,is well known to all. But the annals of the crimes and criminals 
it has generated, i? a chapter in our bistort- [lot yet fully developed. 

Mr, Bramwell, wi English writer and traveler, is reported to affirm that the 
iiniversitiesof Great Britain have conlribu led more to the pride, aristocracy, rice 
and debauchery of (he empire, and furnished more sots and penitentiary criminals. 
i« proportion lo their numhera, than any other class in English society. 

Did the schools of the Carpenter and fishermen of Qollilee, or even those •? 
Soprstes and rtato exhibit such results ? 

Will not the patrons and defenders of those systems of edaoation answer ? 



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INDUSTRIAt 8DUCATI0K. fi 

but never finished. A true process of educatioE,thereEore, can never 
stop; it can never be either remitted or finished ; and all systems oi' 
echolastic learning constructed on that idea, are monkish, prepos- 
terous, delusive and false; and just so far forth, a cnrse instead of 
a blessing to mankind, ever begetting aspiritof pedanticlittleness, 
frivoli^ and the supercilious pride of a conceited monk or an 
India Brahman, instead oi: that brave, generous and steadfa-st 
heroism that should characterize the true man. 

It is self-evident that in order to reach this end, and to avoid 
these antagonistic evils, our systems of public instruction should 
all have due reference to the varied employments of men in after 
life ; so that each class may be placed in a position which shall 
enable them to develop a literature of their own, and acquire 
a mental aa well as moral discipline, in connection widi their own 
occupation, interests and pui-suits. In other words, the effort 
alwuld he to make each man an intelligent, thinking man, in his 
own profession in life, rather than out of it ; to teach him, first, 
to understand his own business rather than other people's. Then 
he will be better able to govern and take care of himself, and need 
less expenditure from the State and the church in controlling and 
taking care of him. 

This principle has, in theory, become fully recognized, and 
applied with more or less perfection to some four or five of thi> 
■varied pursuits of men, and obviously, ought to be applied in thc- 
same way and on the same principle to them all. 

The divines, the lawyers, the physicians, the teachei-s, and the 
military men of our country, each and all, have their specific 
Bchools, libraries, appai'atus and universities, forthe application of 
all known forms of knowledge to their several professions in life. 
Hence the surprising intelligence and power which these classe.« 
now exhibit, since the founding of universities and schools for their 
special uses, compared with that manifested by the same classes 
in the times [of the monks, barons, quacks, schoolmen and crusa- 
ders of the middle ages. Hence the eloquence and power of om- 
pulpits, and our courts and senates — the efEeiency of our medical, 
and military skill. 

It is true that the laws of God are everywhere, and to all persons, 
and classes, the same ; and that all science is based upon these 
uniform laws ; but it is equally true that their application to the 
pursuits of lifo, and the consequent natural discipline and devel- 
opment of mind is infinitely various. 

No man, in his senses, ima^nes if all our divines had beeu 
trained at West Point, all our lawyers, physicians and general* 
at Mount Holyoke or Andover or Princeton, tjiat .there would have- 



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F/O INDUSTRIAL BDUCATItiS. 

been either the same energy of effort and success, or the same disci- 
plino of mind in these professions tliat now exist. Skill, and a proper 
knowledge of the laws of projectiles — the chainshot and the bomb- 
Khell will hardly make a divine ; and adroitness witli the dishcloth 
or with the folios of the fathers, would scarcely have achieved thi; 
conquest of the empire of the Monterumas, 

So far forth as discipline of mind is concerned, all know that 
tlie greater part of it is procured in all these professions, not at 
their several schools, however excellent and appropriate in them- 
selves, but by the continued habits of reading, thought and reflec- 
tion, IN CONNECTION WITH THEIR SEVERAL PROFESSIONAL PURSUITS 
IN AITEE LIFE ; asd if not so acquired, it is never, in fact, acquir^- 
cd at all. 

The young graduate from all these schools, alike, is generally 
]ironounced green, raw, undisciplined and sophomorjcal, and shows 
himself to be so. But his university or his school has done one 
thing for him of immense value and importance, and only one : it 
has neither duly informed, nor disciplined his mind, as is some- 
times pretended ; but IT has shown him how that mind can be 

])ISCIPLINBD, IH CONNECTION ¥ITH THE PROFESSIONAL PURSUITS OF 
HIS AFTER LIFE, if hc will attend to it '. but if not, it cannot be. 
This is the moat that universities or schools of any sort can, as a 
general rule, do for any man ; they give him a start in that course, 
ivhich, in afterlife, hois to pursue. To this end, the peculiar 
literature appropriate to each of these professions, is quite as im- 
portant as the universities and schools which created it : for as 
a general rule, men will not read and reflect on subjects totally 
liisconnected with their daily duties and interests, so as to derive 
that needful discipline of mind, from other pursuits, which nature 
teaches should be derived from theh- own. — Some few minds, it is 
true, in all professions, have an appetency for universal knowledge, 
just as some men seem to have skill in universal art, but the great 
majority of men obtain all the real discipline and development of 
mind which they ever do obtain, in immediate connexion with 
their own individual pursuits and duties in life, and not outside 
tii these. 

The sun which they see, is only the one which lightens their own 
world ; and from this, alone, the light of life must come to them, 
if it come at all i all beyond is, to them, starlight, and must re- 
main so till they quit their present sphere of action and duty. 

Now, our industrial classes, although much more numerous than 
ail the others combined, are, to a vast extent, to say the least, 
aione, of all others, left entirely without the indispensable mean* 
■-af applying this same knowledge or science to their several piiir- 



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1NDDS1EIAL EDCCATION. 11 

ta to teac! lem 1 3o lo to read, obsen'e and think, and 
a t 80 as to de ve th 8 same nee Iful and wholesome mentat dis- 
pl ne from the r pur uita a 1 Ee which the professional and mil- 
iary classes are taught to lenve from theirs. Of course, they 

e also equally de t tQte of the needful literature for such ends, 
nd m 8t oE necc s tv reuanso till universities are endowed for 
cat ng t n the ame wiy 1 1 as been created for others. They 

e all n tl s country now so far as appropriate educational and 
e ent fie pnv lege a e conceme I where the professional and mil- 
itary classes, theroselves, were, m the days of the monks and 
schoolmen, with no appropriate schools, apparatus, or teachci-s, 
or literature suited to the proper application of knowledge to their 
ceveral pursuits and callings. 

Is it said that fanners and mechanics do not and will not read ? 

Give them a literature and an education then, suited to their 
actual wants, and sec if it does not reform and improve them in 
this respect, as it has done their brethren in the professional 
elasses. As a matter of fact, all know they now have no such 
practical, congenial literature to read ; and still, as a general rule 
they read more, and know more about tho proper pursuits of the 
professional classes, than those classes do about theirs, in propor- 
tion to the opportunities they have. 

Suppose you should supply the libraries of the divine and the 
'lawyer with practical treatises on the raising of crops, tlie resuscita- 
tion and improvement of soils, and the management of stock, ortho 
navigation of the polar seas, instead of books treating of the 
peculiar nature and duties of his owu profession, does any, maw 
suppose that these professions would exhibit the same love of reail- 
■'ng and study, or attain the same mental discipline which they 
now do? The idea is absurd. 

Give a divine or a lawyer a book on agriculture, and bow soon 
it is thrown aside ! And is it surprising that the farmer and me- 
chanic treats other books on the same principle, and in the same 
ivay, for the same reason? But how greedily they devour, in all 
our periodicals and pamphlets the few scraps that directly pertain 
to their own interests, and how soon new implements of life and 
]iower start up from their practical and creative minds out of 
every new idea in philosophy that dawns upon the race and 
claims its place in the crystal palaces, and its reward at the indus- 
trial fairs of the world? And are such minds on this great con- 
tinent to be longer left, by the million, without a single universi- 
ty or school of any sort, adapted to the peculiar wants of their 
(.-raft, while the whole energies of the republic are taxed to the 
utmoBt to furnish universities, colleges and schools adapted to iht 



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12 ISDUSTBIAL BDUCATIOK. 

wants of the professional and militaiy classes, who constitute not 
the one hundredth part of the population, and represent not the 
thousandth part of the vital interests of any civilized and well or- 
tJered community ? 

Ate these pHrsuits,then,hencath the dignity of rational and accoun- 
table man? God, himself,made the first Adam a gardner or farmer, 
and kept him so till he fell from his high estate. Theseeond Adam, 
sent to repair the ruin of this fall, he made a poor mechanic called 
"thesonof a carpenter, "who chose all his personal followers from 
the same humble class. Deity has pronounced his opinion on th? 
dignity and value of these pursuits, by the repeated acta of Ids wis- 
dom and grace, as well as by the inflexible laws o£ hia providence 
compelling industrial labor as the onlymeans ofpreservinghcaltU 
of body, vigor, purity of mind and even life itself. 

Where did Socrates, the wisest of the Greeks, and Cineinnatus. 
the most illustrious of the Romans — Washington, the father oi' 
America, and Franklin, and Sherman, and Kossuth, and Down- 
ing, and Hugh Miller, and a whole host of worthies, too' numerous 
to mention, get their education? They derived it from their con- 
nexion with the practical pursuits of life,where ali other men have 
got theirs, so far forth as it has proved of any practical use to 
themselves or the world. 

What we want from schools is, to teach men, more dull of ap- 
prehension, to derive their mental and moral strengh, from their 
own pursuits, whatever they are, in the same way, and on the 
same principles, and to gather from other sources as much more 
as they find time to achieve. We wish to teach them to read books, 
only that they may the better read and understand the great vol- 
ume of nature, ever open before them. 

Can, then, no schools and no literature, suited to the peculiai- 
wants of the industrial classes, be created by the application of 
science to their pursuits? Has God so made the world, that peculiar 
schools, peculiar applications of science, and a peculiar resultant lite- 
rature are found indispensable to the highest success in tlie art of kill- 
ing men, in all states, while nothing of the kind can be based on thi- 
infinitely multifarious arts and processes of feeding, clothing and 
housing them ? Are there no suSicient materials of knowledge, 
and of the highest mental and moral discipline in immediate con- 
nexion with these pursuits ? This is to suppose that God has 
condemned the vast majority of mankind to live in circumstance* 
jn which the beet and mghest deveJopment of their noblest facul- 
ties is a sheer impossibility, unless they turn aside from thosi- 
spheres of duty to which bis Providence has evidently consigned 
ibem. Such an assumption is as pedantic and shallow as it is 



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INDUSTEIAL HDCCATION. IS 

wicked and blasphemous. For wbat, but for this very end ol in- 
teileetual discipline and development, has God bound the daily 
labors of all these sons of toil in the shop and on the farm, in 
close and ineeaaant contact with all the mighty mysteries of his 
own creative wisdom, as displayed in heaven above, and on earth 
beneath, and in the waters and soils that are under the earth ? 
Why are there more recondite and profound principles of pure 
mathematics immediately connected with the sailing o£ a ship, or 
the moulding and driving of a plow, or aa axe, or, a jack-piane, 
than with all three of the, so called, learned professions together, 
if it be not intended that those engaged in these pursuits should 
derive,,mental calture as well as bodily sustenance and strength 
from these instrumeuta of their art and their toil ? Why has God 
linked the light, the dew drop, the clouds, the sunshine and the 
storm, and concentrated the mighty powers of the earth, the ocean 
and the sky, directed by that unknown and mysterious force which 
rolls the spheres, and arms the thunder-cloud — why are all these 
mystic and potent influences connected with the growing of every 
plant, and the opening of every flower, the motion of every engine 
and every implement, if he did not intend that each son and daugh- 
ter of Adam's race should learn through the handicraft of their 
daily toil, to look through nature up to nature's God, trace his 
deep designs, and derive their daily mental and moral culture, aa 
well as their daily food, from that toil that is ever encircled and 
circumscribed on all hands, by the unfathomed energies of his 
wisdom and his power ? , No foundation for the development and 
culture of a high order of science and hterature, and the noblest 
capacities of mind, heart and soul, in connexion with the daily 
employments of the industrial classes! How came such a heath- 
enish and apostate idea ever to get abroad in the world? Was 
Gud mistaken when he flrst placed Adam in the garden, instead 
of the academy? or when he sentenced him to toil for his future 
lalvation, instead .of giving him over to abstract contemplation? 
when he made his Son a carpenter instead of a rabbi ? Or when 
ke made man a man instead of a monk? Ko : God's ways are 
ever, ways of wisdom and truth ; but Satan has, in all ages, con- 
tinued to put darkness for light — sophistry and cant;for knowledge 
ind truth— cunning and verbiage, for wisdom and virtue— tyranny 
and outrage, for government and law — and to fill the world with 
brute muscles and bones, in one class — luxurious, insolent and 
useless nen'es andbraius, in another class, without either bodies 
or Houls, and to call the process by which the result, in the latter 
«a8e, is reached, education. And from the possibility of such 
an education as this, God has, in his mercy, hiUierto sheltered hia 



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14 IND08TRIAL BDCCATION. 

defenseless poor. And if suchhot-bed procesBes are,.alone, to be^ 
dignified with, the name of education, then, it is clearly impossible- 
that the laboring classes should ever be educated ; God has inter- 
dicted it. Or, even if no other system of education is ever to be 
devised or attempted, except that alone which is most fit for the 
professional and the military man, it is equally clear that this 
cannot be made available to any considerable portion of the in- 
dustrial classes,. 

But the idea has got abroad, in the world, that some practical, 
liberal system, of education for the industrifd classes, suited at 
once to their circumstances and their wants, can be devised, and 
this idea is not likely soon to he stopped ; it seems to work beneath 
the surface of human thought with the energy of a volca"nic fire, 
and we think it will soon burst forth, into an out-birth to purify 
what is goodi and overwhelm and annihilate whatever there may 
be that is evil in our present educational ideas and processes. 

In order to excite a proper interest in this department of edu- 
cation, the public are already aware that several conventions 
have been held in this State. 

The first convention, was held at Granville, Putnam County, 
November 18th, 1851. 

The report of this convention was, in due time, published by 
the committee- and presented to the public. It has since been 
reprinted, and commented upon in nearly all the leading agricul- 
tural and horticultural journals of the several States, and especi- 
ally those of the North and West. It was also copied into the 
patent office reports at Washington, and has received the favora- 
ble regard of nearly all the leading minds in the agricultural and 
mechanical classes, and their associations and institutes through- 
out the Union. While great numbers of addresses, resolutions, re- 
ports, and newspaper and periodical articles — all aiming to eluci* 
date the same general idea, have been presented to the public, in 
all parts of the Union, showing that this is the great felt want of the 
mind and heart of the nation. 

This report wm as follows : 



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PROCEEDINGS- 

OF THE 

FAEIERS' CONVENTION AT GRANVILLE; 

Held november 18, 1851. 



In accordance with previous notice, a, convention of fanners was. 
held at Granville, Putnam county, on Tuesday the l8tii day of 
November,' 1851. The attendance was quite large, and from, 
various parts o£ the State, 

The convention organized by appointing Hon. Oaks Turner, oC 
Hennepin, Chairman pro torn., and Mr. M. Osman, of Ottawa, 
Secretary pro tem. 

Mr, Ralph Ware moved that a committee of three be appointed 
by the chair to nominate permanent officers for the convention ; 
which was agreed to; whereupon the chair appointed Messrs. Ealpl 
Ware, John Hise and Sidney Pulsifer said committee. 

The committee, after a few minutes absence, returned and re- 
ported the following persons as permanent officers of the convention: 

Hon, Oaks Turner, President. 

Hon, Wm, ReJdick, oE Ottawa, and Prof. J,.E, Turner, of 
Jacksonville, f^ice Presidents. 

Mr,-M. Osman, JRtcording Secretary, 

Mr. Ralph Ware, of Granville, Corresponding' Secretary. 

On motion the report wae adopted and the committee discharged. 

The President then stated that he was not fully advised as to 
the real objects of the convention, and suggested that some one 
bettor qualified should make them known. 

Mr. Ware then stated that, according to the call, they had met 
to take into consideration such measures as might be deemed most 
expedient to further the interests of the agricultural community, 
and particularly to take steps towards the establishment of an 
Agricultural University. 

On motion of Mr. Grehle, a committee of throe was appointed 
to report business upon which the convention should act. The 
committee consisted of Mr. John Greble, Prof. J, B, Turner, and 
Mr. Lewis Weston. 

During the absence of this committee, short addresses were de- 
livered by Messrs. Hise, Grehle, Ware and others. 



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1(> INDUSTRIAL BDOCATION. 

The committee returned and stated tliat they would not be fully 
prepared to report before evening ; and suggested that the after- 
noon be devoted to a general discussion of such subjects, pertain- 
ing to agriculture, as might present themselves, 

A lively discussion was then commenced on various subjects, in 
which Powell, of Mt. Palatine, Butler, of SpoonRiver, Greble, of 
Putnam co., Weston, of La Salle CO., Gilmer,of Granville, Ked- 
dick, of Ottawa, and others participated. 

After which the convention adjourned ontil half past six o'clock 
in the evening. 

Evening Session. 

The convention was called to order by the chairman. 

Prof. Turner, as chairman of the Committee onBusiness, report- 
ed the following resolutionsforthefuture action of the convention : 

Resolved, That we greatly rejoice in the degree of perfection 
to-which our various institutions, for the education of our brethren 
engaged in professional, scientific, and literary pursuits, hav« 
already attained, and in the mental and moral elevation which 
those institutions have given tbem, and their consequent prepara- 
tion and capacity for the great duties in the spheres of life in 
which they are engaged ; and that we will aid in all ways consist- 
ent, for the still greater perfection of such institutions. 

Resolved, That as the representatives of the industrial classes, 
including all cultivators of the soil, artisans, mechanics and mer- 
chants, we desire the same privileges and advantages for ourselves, 
our fellows and our posterity, in each of our several pursuits and 
callings, as om- professional brethren enjoy in theirs ; and we 
admit that it is our own fault that we do not also enjoy them. 

^eso/re(/, That, in our opinion, the institutions originally and 
primarily designed to meet the wants of the professional classes 
as such, cannot, in the nature of things, meet ours, no more than 
the institutions we desire to establish for ourselves could meet 
tl^eirs. Therefore, 

Resolved, That wo take immediate measures for the establish- 
ment of a University, in the State of Illinois, expressly to meet 
ihoae felt wants of each and all the industrial classes of our State; 
that we recommend the foundation of high schools, Ijceums, in- 
stitutes, &c., in each of our counties, on similar principles, so soo» 
as they may find it practicable so to do. 

Resolved, That in our opinion such institutions can never 
impede, but must greatly promote, the best interests of all those 
enlisting institutions. 

After reading the above resolutions, Prof. Turner proceeded. 



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INDUSTRUL EDUCATION- IT 

in an able and interesting manner, to unfold liia plan for the es- 
tabtighment and maiDtenance of the Industrial University. 

The convention then adjourneitill 9 o'clock to-morrow morning. 

Wednesday Morning, Nov. 19. 

Met pursuant to adjournment. 

On motion, the resolutions were again taken up and read, and, 
after some deliberation, severally adopted. 

Mr. Hise offered the following resolutions : 

Resolved, That we approve of the general plan for an Illinois 
State University for the Industrial Classes, presented by Prof. J. 
B. Turner, andr«quest him to furnish the outlines of his plan, 
presented to this Convention, to the Committee of Publication, for 
publication in the Prairie Farmer, and all other papers in this 
State which will publish the same; and that one thousand copies be 
published in pamphlet form for gratuitous distribution. 

Resolved, That W. A. Pennell, M. Oeman, L. L. Bullock and 
Kalph Ware, be a Committee of Publication. 

J?eso/uerf, That the Committeo of Publication forward to each 
editor in every county in the State a copy of the publications of 
this convention, with a request that they should republish the same; 
and, also, send a copy to our Governor, Senators and Representa- 
tives and State Officers, and to all others who may be interested 
in the same. 

Resolved, That each member of this convention do all in his 
power to promote the circulation and reading of the above publica- 
tions, and through this and other means, to secure, as far as prac- 
ticable, speakers to lecture on the subject in each of the counties in 
the State. 

Resolved, That Messrs. J. B. Turner and Marcus Morton, of 
Morgan county; James McConnell, Elijah lies, and David L. 
Ciregg, of Sangamon co.; John Davis, of Decatur ; John Woods, 
of Quincy; John Hise, of La Salle, co.; Aaron Shaw, of Lawrence 
CO.; John Dougherty, of Union co.; L. S. Pennington, oJ: White- 
side CO. ; W. J. Phelps, of Elm Wood, Peoria co. ; and Dr. Ames, 
of Winnebago co., be a Central Committee to call a State Con- 
vention, to meet at Springfield at an early hour of the next session 
of the Legislature, or at such other time and place as they and the 
friends of the cause may deem most expedient. 

Resolved, That this Convention earnestly solicit the Governor of 
this State to enumerate in the call for an extra session of the 
Legislature, should one be held before the next regular session, the 
objects of this convention in the establishment of an Industrial 
University, as business to be acted upon by that body at that time. 



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1 i mOUSTBUL EDUCATION. 

Resolved, That a memorial and petitions be prepared and fur- 
nished by the publishing committee for the purpose of petitioning 
the Legielature upon this subject. 

During the discussion of these resolutions the Convention ad- 
journed till 1 o'clock, P. M. 

Afternoos Session. 

Met pursuant to adjournment. 

Mr. Hise's resolutions were again taken up and severally passed. 

Mr. Lofflin introduced the followingresolution,which was adopted: 

Resolved, That we earnestly sohcit the pOople of this State to. 
meet in their primary assemblies and diacuBS the objects of this 
convention as shall be made known by our published proceedings, 
and join with ns in asking the Legislature to grant to. the people of 
this State, the fund which belongs to them, to aid them in estab- 
lishing an institute for the industrial classes of this State, instead 
of dividing that fund among the different colleges, now in the 
State, as contemplated by those institutions. 

In compliance with a request made by Mr. Thomas Ware, and 
others, Prof. Turner gave a short history of a number of experi-- 
ments lie had made in reference to the blight upon fruit trees. 

The Convention then adjourned sine die. 

M. OsMAN, Sei'y. OAKS TURNER, Pres'i. 



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PLAN FOR AN INDUSTRIAL UNIVERSITY, 

FOE THE STATE OF ILLINOIS. 

To TKE Committee of Pcblicatiom of THE Granville Convektioh : 
Gentlemen ; — I have endeavored to prepare an ouUine of my views ot on 
Inijustrial Universily for the State of Illinois, as perfect as the ehort time altow- 
ed me, and my own feeble health would permit. Notwittistiinding my total 
inability to do Justice to the subject, I trust you^may find it useful in directing 
the mind of the people of this State to the most important interest ever proposed 
for their consideration, and in eliciting from Ihem an early and intelligent ex- 
pression of ffteir views and wishes in regard (o it. 

I have the honor to be, gentlemen, mast respectfully, yours, 
JicKsoNviLLE, November, 1851. J. B. TURNER. 

AH eivUized society is, necessarily, divided into two distinct co- 
operative, not antagonistic, classes ; — a small class, whoso proper 
business it is to teach the true principles of religion, law, medicine, 
science, art, and literature ; and a much larger class, who are en- 
gaged in some form of labor in agriculture, commerce, and the 
arts. For the sake of convenience, we will designate the former 
th^pROFBssiONAL, and the latter the Isdustrial class ; not imply- 
ing that each maly not he equally industrious : the one in tneir 
intellectual, the other in their industrial pursuits. Probably, in no 
case would society ever need more than five men out of one hundred 
in the professional class, leaving ninety-five in every hundred in 
the industrial ; and, so long as so many o£ our ordinary teachers 
and public men are taken from tfie industrial class, as there are 
at present, and probably will he for generations to come, we do not 
really need over one professional man for every hundred, leaving 
ninety- nine in the industrial class. 

The vast difference, in the practical means, of an appropriate 
LIBERAL BDOOATios, Suited to their wants and their destiny, which 
these two classes enjoy, and ever have enjoyed the world over, 
must have arrested the attention of every thinking man. True, 
the same general abstract science exists in the world for both classes 
alike; but the means of bringing this abstract truth into effectual 
contact with the daily business and pursuits of the one class does 
exist, while in the other case it does not exist, and never can till it 
is new created. 

The one class have schools, seminaries, colleges, universities. 



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'20 ISDUSTRiaL EDUCATI05. 

a.pparatus, professors, and multitudinous appliances for educating 
and training them for montlis and years, for the peculiar profess- 
ion which is to he the business of tlieir life ; and they have already 
created, each class for its own use, a vast and voluminous Sifera- 
ture, that would well nigh sink a wiiolo navy of ships. 

But where are the universities, the apparatus, the professors, 
and the literature, specifically adapted to any one of the industrial 
classes 't Echo answers, where ? In other words, society has be- 
come, long since, wise enough to know that its trachbrs need to 
be educated; but it has not yet become wise enough to know that its 
WORKERS need education just as much. In these remartsi have 
not forgotten that our common schools are equally adapted and 
applied to all classes; but reading, writing, &c., are, properly, no 
more education than gathering seed is agriculture, or cutting ship- 
timber navigation. They are the mere rudimenra, as they are 
called, or means, the mere instrument of an after education, and if 
not so used they are, and can be, ot little more use to the possessor 
than an axe in the garret or a ship rotting upon the stocks. 

Nor am I unmindful of the efforts of the monarchs and aristo- 
crats of the old world in founding schools for the "fifteenth cous- 
ins" of their order, in hopes of training them into asort otgenleel 
farmers, or rather overseers of farmers ;vnor yet, of the several 
"back fires" (as the Prairie Fanner significantly designates them) 
set by some of our older professional institutions, to keep the rising 
and blazing thought of the indt^trial masses from turning too 
furiously. They have hauled a canoe alongside of their huge pro- 
fessional steamships and invited ail the farmers and mechanics of 
the State to jump on board and sail with them ; but the difficulty 
is, they will not embark. But we thank them even for this pains 
and courtesy. It shows that their hearts are yearning toward us, 
notwithstanding the ludicrous awkwardness of their fii^t endeavors 
to save us. 

But'an answer to two simple questions will perhaps sufficiently 
indicate our ideas of the whole subject, though that answer, on the 
present occasion, must necessarily be confined to a bare outline. 
The first question, then, is this : 

I. What dotis: Industrial Classes wast? 

II. How CAS THAT WANT BE 8DIH.IED ? 

The first question may be answered in few words. They want, 
and they ought to have, the same facilities for Hnderstan(fing the 
'true philosophy — the science and the art of their several pursuits, 
(^heir life-business, ) and of efficiently applying existing knowl- 
edge thereto and widening its dtmain, irhich the profession ol classes 



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UIDL'STRIAL EDUCATIOK. 21' 

have long enjoyed in their pursuits. — Tlieir first ialior is thereiore, 
to supply a vacuum from i'oijntainB already Ml, and bring the 
living waters of knowledge within their own reach. Their, second 
is, to help fill tho fountains with still greater supplies. They de- 
sire to depress no institution, no class whatever; they only wish to 
elevate themselves and their pursuits to a position in society to 
which alt men acknowledge they are justly entitled, and to which 
they also desire to see them aspire. 

il. How THES CAS THAI WANT BE SUPPLED? 

In answering this question, I shall endsiivor to present, with all 
possible frankness and clearness, the outline of impressions, and 
convictions that have been gradually deepening in my own mind, 
tor the past twenty years, and let them pass for whatever the true 
friends of the cause may think them worth. 

And I answer,first, negatively, that this want cannot be supplied 
by any at the existing institutions for the professional classes, nor 
by any incidental appendage attached to them as a mere secondary 
department, 

These institutions were designed and adapted to meet the wanL^ 
of the professional classes, as such — especially the clerical order: 
and they are no more suited to the real wante of the industrial 
class than the institution we propose for them, would be suited to 
theprofessional class. 

Their whole spirit and aim is, or should he, literary and intel-. 
lectual — not practical and industrial ; to make men of books and 
ready speech — not men of work, and industi'ial, silent thought.. 
Bat, the very best classical scholars are often tho very. worst, prac- 
tical reasoners ; and that they should be made workers is contrary, 
to the nature of things — the fixed laws of God. The whole inter- 
est, business, and destiny for life of the two classes, run in op- 
posite lines ; and that the same course oE study should be equally 
well adapted to both, is as utterly impossible as that the same pur- 
suits and habits should equally concern and beSt both classes. 

The industrial classes know and feel fhis, and therefore they. 
do not, and will not, patronize these institutions, only so far forth 
as thoy desire to make professional men for public use. As a 
general fact, their own multitudes do, and will forever, stand aloof 
from them ; and, while they desire to foster and cherish them for 
their own appropriate uses, they know that they do not, and can - 
not,fill the sphere of their own urgent industrial wants. They need a 
similar system of Ub&ral education for tiieir own class, and adap- 
ted to their own nursuits ; to create, for them an Industrial Lrr- 
ERATURB, adapted to their professional wants, to raise up for them 
teachers and lecturers^ for subordinate institutes, and to elevate 



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22 iNDDSlRlAL EDOCATlOti. 

them, tjieir pttrsuils, and their posterity to that relative position in 
human society for which Crod designed thero; 

The whole history of education, hoth in Protestant and Catho- 
lic countries, shows that we must begin with the higher institutions, 
or we can never succeed with the lower ; for the plain reason, that 
neither knowledge nor water will run up hill. No people ever Lad, 
or ever can have, any system of common schools and lower semi- 
naries worth anything, until they first founded their higher insti- 
tutions and fountains of knowledge from which they could draw 
supplies of teachers, &e., for the lower. We would begin, there- 
fore, where all experience and common sense show that we must 
begin, if we would effect anything worthy of an effort. 

In this view of the case, the first thing wanted in this process, is 
a National Institcxb of Science, to operate as the great central 
luminary of the national mind^ from which all minor institutions 
should derive light and heat, and toward which they should, also, 
reflect back their own. This primary want is already, I trust, sup- 
plied by the Smithsonian Institute, endowed by James Smithson, 
and incorporated by the U. S. Congress, at Washington, D. C. 

To co-operate with this ooble Institute, and enable the Indus- 
trial classes to realize its benefits in practical life, we need a 
University for the Industrial Classes in each of the States, 
with their consequent subordinate institutes, lyceums, and high 
schools, in each of the counties and towns. 

The objects of these institutes should be to apply existing knowl- 
edge directly and efBciently to all practical pursuits and professions 
in life, and to extend the boundaries of our present knowledge in 
all possible practical directions. 



PLAN FOR THE STATE UNIVERSITY. 

There should be connected with such an institution, in this State, 
a sufficient quantity o£ land of variable soil and aspect, for all its 
needful annual experiments and processes in the great interests of 
Agriculture and Horticulture- 
Buildings of appropriate size and constraetion for all its ordin- 
aj-y and special uses ; a complete philosophical, chemical, anatom- 
ical, and industrial apparatus; ageneral cabinet, embracing every- 
thing that relates to, illustrates, or facilitates any one of the in- 
dustrial arts; especially all sorts of animals, birds, reptiles, insects, 
trees, shrubs, and plants found in this State and adjacent States. 
Instruction should be eonstontly given in the anatomy and phys- 
iology, the nature, instincts and habits of all animals, insects, 



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MDOSTRLU, EDUCATION. 2a 

trees andplants; their laws of pf opogation, primogeniture, growth, 
and decay, disease and healtli, life and death ; on the nature, com- 
positioD, adaptation, and regeneration of soils; on tte nature, 
strength, durability, preservation, perfection, composition, cost, 
use, and manufacture of all materials of art and trade ; on polit- 
ical, financial, domestic, and, manual economy, (or the saving of 
labor of the hand,)in all industrial processes; on the true principles 
of national, constitutional, and civil law; and the true theory and art 
of governing and controlling, or directing the labor of men in the 
State, the family, shop, and farm; on the laws of vicinage, or the 
laws of courtesy aiid comity between Beighbors,as such, and on the 
principles of health and disease in the human subject, so far at 
least as is needful' for household safety ; on the laws of trade and 
commerce, ethical, conventional, and practical; on book-keeping 
and accounts ; and in short, in all those studies and sciences, of 
whatever sort, which tend to throw light upon any art or employ- 
ment, which any student may desire to master, or upon any duty 
he may be called to perform ; or which may tend to secure his 
moral, civil, social and industrial perfection, as a man. 

No species of knowledge should be excluded, practical or theo- 
retical ; unless, indeed, those specimens of "organized ignorance" 
found in the creeds of party politicians, and sectarian ecclesiastics 
should be mistaken by some for a species of knowledge. 

Whether a distinct classical department should be added or not, 
would depend on expediency. It might be deemed best to leave 
that department to existing colleges as*lheir more appropriate 
work, and to form some practical and economical connection with 
them for that, purpose : or it might be best to attach a classical 
department in due time to the institution itself. 

To facilitate tie increase and practical application and diffusien 
of knowledge, the professors should conduct, each in his own de- 
partment, a continued series of annual experiments. 

For example, let twenty or more acres of each variety of grain, 
(each acre accurately measured,) be annually sown, with soico 
practical variation on each acre, as regards the quahty and prepara- 
tion of the soil, thekindandquantityof seed, the time and mode of 
sowing or planting, the time and modes and processes of cultivation 
and harvesting, and an accurate account kept of all costs, labor ,&c- , 
and of the final results. Let analogous experiments be tried on all 
the varied products of the farm, the fruit yard, th« nursery, and the 
garden ; on all modes of crossing, rearing and fattening domestic 
animals, under various degrees of warmth and of light, with and 
withoi^ shelter ; on green, dry, raw, ground, and cooked food, cold 
.and warm; oh the nature, causes; and cure of their various diseases, 



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24 rNOUSTEIAL EDUCATIOK. 

both of those on the premises and of those brought in from abroad, 
and advice given, and annualreports made on tiiose and all similar 
topics. Let the professors of physiology and entomology be ever 
abroad- at the proper seasons, with the needful apparatus for see- 
ing alt things visible and invisible, and scrutinizing the latent 
causes of all those blights, blasts, rots, rusts and mildews which 
po often destroy the choicest products of industry, and thereby 
impair the health, wealth, and comfort of millions of our fellow 
men. Let the professor of chemistry carefully analyze the various 
soils and products of the State, retain specimens, give in- 
struction, and report on their various qualities, adaptations, and 
deficiencies. 

Let similar experiments be made in all other interests of agri- 
culture and mechanic or chemical art, mining, merchandize and 
transportation by water and by land, and daily practical and ex- 
perimental instruction given to each student in attendance in his 
own chosen sphere of research or labor in life. Especially let 
the comparative merits of all labor saving tools, instruments, 
machines, engines and processes, be thoroughly and practically 
tested and explained, so that their benefits might be at once enjoy- 
ed, or the expense of their coat avoided by the unskillful and un- 
wary. 

It is believed by many intelligent men, that from one-third to 
one- half the annual products of this State are annually lost from 
ignorance on the above topics. And it can scarcely be doubted 
that in a few years the entire cost of the whole Institution would be 
annuailv saved to the State in the above interests alone, aside 
from all its other benefits, intellectual, moral, social, and pecun- 
iary. 

The Apparatus required for such a work is obvious. There 
should be grounds devoted to a botanical and common garden, to 
orchards and fruit yards, to appropriate lawns and promenades, in 
which the beautiful art of landscape gardening could be appropri- 
ately applied and illustrated, to all varieties of pasture, meadow, 
and tillage needful for the successful prosecution of the needful 
annual experiments. And on these grounds should be collected and 
exhibited a sample of every variety of domestic animal, and of 
every tree, plant, and vegetable that can minister to the health, 
wealth, or taste and comfort of the people of the State; their nature, 
habits, merits, production, improvement, culture, diseases, and 
accidents thoroughly scrutinized, tested, and made known to the 
students and to the people of the State. 

There should, also, be erected a suffident number of buildings 
and out-builiUn^ for all the purposes above indicated, and a 



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INDUSTRIAL EDCCAnOS.- 35 

HepositoM, in which ail the ordinary tools and implements of the 
institution should be kept, and models of all other useful imple- 
raents and machines from time to time collected, and tested as they 
are proffered to public use. At first it would be for the interest of 
inventors and vendors to make such deposits. But, should similar 
institutions be adopted in other States, the general government 
ought to create in each State a generai patent ofSce, attached to 
the Universities, similar to the existing deposits at Washington, 
thus rendering this department o£ mechanical art and ski!! more 
accessible to tie great mass of the people o£ the Union, 

I should have said, also, that a suitable industrial library should 
be at once procured, did not all the world know such a thing to hc^ 
impossible, and that one of the first and most important duties of 
the professors of such institutions will be to begin to create, at this 
iate hour, a proper practical literature, and series of text books for 
the industrial classes. 

As regards the Professors, they should, of course, not only 
be men of the most eminent, practical ability in their eeverai de- 
partments, but their connexion with the institution should be ren- 
dered so fixed and stable, as to enable them to carry through suc!i 
designs as they may form, or all the peculiar beneSta of the system 
would be lost. 

Instruction, by lectures and otherwise, should bo given mostly 
in the colder months of the year; leaving the prnfessors to prosecut^ 
their investigations, and the students their necessary labor, either 
at home or on the premises, during the warmer months. 

The institution should be open to all classes of students above a 
fixed age, and for any length of time, whether three months or 
seven years, and each taught in those particular branches of art 
which he wishes to pursue, and to any extent, more or less. And 
all should pay their tuition and board bills, in whole or in part, 
either in money or necessary work on tho premises — regard being 
had to the ability of each. 

Among those who labor, medals and testimonials of merit should 
be given to those who perform their tasks with most promptitude, 
energy, care, and skill ; and all who prove indolent or ungoverna- 
ble, excluded at first from all part in labor, and speedily, if not 
thoroughly reformed, from the institution itself; and hero again 
let the law of nature instead of the law of rakes and dandies be 
regarded, and the true impression ever made on the mind of all 
around, that woBK alone is jionorable, and indolence certain 
disgrace if not ruin. 

At some convenient season of the year, the Commencement, or 
Annual Fair of the University, should be holden through a sue- 



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26 TODDSTRIAl EDUCATION. 

cession of days. On this occasion the doora of "the ina:titution, with 
all its treasures of art and resources of knowledge, should be thrown 
open to all classes, and as many other objects of agricultural or 
mechanical skill, gathered from the whole state, as possible, and 
presented by the people for inspection and premium on the best ot 
-each kind ; judgment being rendered, in all cases, by a commit- 
tee wholly disconnected with the institution. On this occasion, all 
the professors, and as many of the pupils as are sufficiently ad- 
vanced, should be constantly engaged in leeturmg and espkining 
the divers objects and interests of their departments. In short, 
this occasion should be made the great ann-nal Gala-Day of the 
Institution, and of all the industrial classes, and all other classes 
in the State, for the exhibition of their products and their skill, 
and for the vigorous and powerful diffusion of practical knowledge 
in their ranks, and a more intense ■enthuaasm in its extension and 
pursuit. 

As matters now are, the world has never adopted any efficient 
means for the application and diffusion of even the practical 
knowledge which does exist. True, we have fairly got the primer, 
the spelling book, and the newspaper abroad in the world, and we 
think that we have done wonders ; and so, comparatively, we have. 
But if this is a wonder, there are still not only wonders, but, to 
most minds, inconceivable miracles, from new and unknown worlds 
ot light, soon to break forth upon the industrial mind of the world, 

■Here, then, is a general, tliough very incomplete, outline of 
what such an institution should endeavor to become. Let the read- 
er contemplate it as it will appear when generations have perfect- 
ed it, in ail its magnificence and glory ; in its means of good to 
man, to all men of ail classes : in its power to evolve and diffuse 
practical knowledge and skill, true taste, love of industry, and 
sound morality — ■not only through its apparatus, experiments, in- 
structions, and annual lectures and reports, but through its thous- 
ands of graduates, in every pursuit in life, teaching and lecturing 
in all our towns and villages; and then let him seriously ask 
himself, is not such an object worthy of at least an effort, and 
worthy of a state which God himself, in the very act of creation, 
designed to be the first agricultural and commercial state on the 
face of the globe? 

Who should set the world so glorious an example of educating their 
sons worthily of their heritage, their duty, and their destiny, if 
not the people o£ such a state ? In our country we have no aris- 
tocracy, with the inalienable wealth of ages and constant leisure 
and means to perform all manner of nselul experiments for their 
own amusement ; but we must create our nobility for this purpose, 



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INDCSIWAL EDUCATION. 27 

as we elect our rulers, from our own ranks, to aid and serve, not 
to domineer Over and control us. And this done, we will not only 
beat England, and beat the world in yacht3,and locks,aEd reapers, 
but in all else that contributes to the well being and true glory of 

I maintain that, if every farmer's and meehanic'a son in this 
state could now visit such an institution but for a single day in 
the year, it would do him more good in arousing and directing the 
dormant energies of mind, than all the cost incurred, and far more 
good than many a six months of professed study of things he 
will never need and never wane to know. 

As things now are, our best farmers and mechanics, by their 
own native force of mind, by the slow process of individual expe- 
rience, come to know, at forty, what they might have been taught 
in six months at twenty ; while a still greater number of the less 
fortunate or less gifted, stumble on through life, almost as igno- 
rant of every true principle of their art as when they begun. A 
man of real skill is amazed at the slovenly ignorance and waste he 
everywhere discovers, oa all parts of their premises ; and stii! more 
to hear them boast o£ their ignorance of all "book farming," and 
maintain tbat "their children can do as well as they have done ;" 
and it certainly would be a great pity if they could not. 

The patrons of our University would be found in the former, not 
in the latter class. The man whose highest conception of earthly 
bliss is a log hut, in an uninclosed yard, where pigs of two species 
are allowed equal rights, unless the four-legged tribe chance to get 
the upper hand, will be found no patron of Industrial Universities. 
Why should he be ? He knows it all abeady. 

There is another class of untaught farmers who devote all their 
capital and hired labor to the culture, on a large scale, of some sin- 
gle productj which always pays well when so produced on a fresh soil, 
even in the most unskillful hands. Now such men often increase 
rapidly in wealth, but it is not by their skill in agriculture, for they 
liave none ; their skili consists in the management of capital and 
labor, and, deprive them of these, and confine them to the varied 
culture of a small farm, and they would starve in five years, where 
a true farmer would amass a small fortune. This class are, how- 
ever, generally, the fast friends of education, though many a 
iooker-on will cite them ae instances of the uselessness of acquired 
skill in farming, whereas they should cite them only as a sample 
of the resistless power of capital even in comparatively unskillful 
hands. 

*Such institutions are the only possible remedy for a caste edu- 
cation, legislation, and literature. If any one class provide for 



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2S ISOUSTRIAIS EDUCATION. 

their, own liberal educiition,in the state, as they sliould do, while 
another class neglect this, it is as inevitable aa Uie law of gravita- 
tion, that they should form a ruling caste or class by themselves, 
and wield their power more or less for their own exclusive interests 
and the interests of their friends. 

If the iodustrial were the only educated class in the state, the 
caste power in their hands would be as much stronger than it now 
is, as their numbers are greater. But now industi-ial education 
lias been wholly neglected, and the various industrial classes lei't 
stOi ignorant of matters of the greatest moment pertaining to their 
vital interests, while the professions have been studied till trifles 
and fooleries have been magnified into matters of immense impor- 
tance, and tornadoes o£ windy words and barrels of innocent ink 
shed over them in vain. 

This, too, is the inevitable result of trying to crowd al! liberal, 
practical education into one narrow sphere o£ human life. It crowds 
their ranks with men totally unfit by nature for professional ser- 
vice. Many of these, under a more congenial culture, might have 
become, instead of the starving scavengers of alearned profession, 
the honored members of an industrial one. Their love of knowl- 
edge was indeed amiable and highly commendable ; buttheneeesei- 
ty which drove them from their natural sphere in life , in order to ob • 
tain it, is truly deplorable. 

But such a system of general education as we npw propose, would 
(in ways too numerous now to mention) tend to increasc-the r 
tability, power, numbers, and resources of the true ( 
class. 

Nor are the advantages of the mental and moral discipline ot 
the student to be overlooked: indeed, I should have set them down 
as most important of all, had I not been distinctly aware that sucli 
an opinionas a most deadly heresy ; and I tremble at the thought of 
being arraigned before the tribunal of all the monks and ecclesias- 
tics of the old world, and no small number of their progeny in 
the new. 

It is deemed highly important that all in the professional class- 
es should become writers and talkers; hence they are so incessantly 
drilled in allthe forms of language, dead and living, though it has 
become quite doubtful whether, even in their case such a course is 
most beneficial, except in the single case, of the professors of liter- 
ature and theology, with whom these languages form the foundation 
of their professions and the indispensable instraments of their fu- 
ture art in life. 

No inconsiderable share, however, of the mental discipline that 
is attributed to this peculiar course of study, arises fi'om daily 



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INDUaTRIAL EDUCATIOS. 2? 

intercourse, for years, with minds of the first order in their teach- 
ers and comrades, and would be produced under any other course, 
if the parties had remained harmoniously together. On the other 
hand, a classical teacher, who has no original, spontaneous power 
of thought, and knows nothing but Latin and Greek, however per- 
fectly, is enough to stultify a whole generation of boys and make 
them all pedantic fools like himself. The idea of infusing mind, 
or creating, or even materially^increasing it by the daiiy inculcation 
of unintelligible words— -all this ai*ful wringing to get blood out of 
a turnip — will, at any rate, never succeed except in the hands of 
tlie eminently wise and prudent, who have had long experience in 
the' process ; the plain, blunt sense of the unsophisticated will never 
realize cost in the operation. There are, moreover, probably, few 
men who do not already talk more, in proportion to what they really 
know, than they ought to. This chronic diarrhcea of exhortation, 
which the social atmftsphere of the age tends to engender, tends far 
less to public health than many suppose. The history of the 
Quakers shows, that more sound sense, a purer morality, and a 
more elevated practical piety can exist, and does exist, entirely 
without it, than is commonly found with it. 

At all events, we find, as society becomes less conservative and 
pedantic, and more truly and practically enlightened, a growing 
tendency, of all other classes, except the literary and clerical, to 
omit this supposed linguistic discipline, and apply themselves di- 
rectly to the more immediate duties of their calling ; and, aside 
from some little inconvenience at first in being outside of caste, 
that they do not succeed quite as well in advancing their own interests 
in life and the true interests of society, there is no eufficfent proof. 

Indeed I think the exclusive and extravagant claims set up for 
ancient l&re, as a means of disciplining the reasoning powers, sim- 
ply ridiculous, when examined in the light of those ancient worthies 
who produced that literature, or the modern ones who have been 
most devoted to its pursuit in tliis country and in Europe. If it 
produces infallible practical reasoners, we have a great many 
thousand infallible antagonistic truths, and ten thousand conflict- 
ing paths oE right, interest, duty, and salvation. — If any man will 
just be at the trouble to open his eyes and his ears, he can per- 
ceive at a glance how much this evasive discipline really does and 
has done for the reasoning faculty of man, and how much for the 
power of sophistical cant, and stereotyped nonsense ; so that if 
obvious facts, instead of verbose declamation, are to have any 
weight in the case, I am willing to join issue with the opposers of 
the proposed scheme, even on the bare ground of it^ superior 
adaptation to develope the meUtal power of its pupils. 



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30 INDUSTRIAt KDUOATION. 

The most natural and effectual mental discipline possible for anjp 
man, arises from setting him to earnest and constant thought; 
about the things he daily does, sees, and handles, and all their 
connected relations and interests. The final object to be attained, 
with the industrial class, is to make them thinking itABOaERs; 
while of the professional class we should desire to make laborious 
THINKEES : the production of goods to feed and adorn the body- 
being the final end of one class of pursuits, and the production of 
thought to do the same for the mind, the end of the other. — But 
neither mind nor body can feed on the offals of preceding genera- 
tions. And this constantly recurring necessity of reproduction, 
leaves an equally honorable, though somewhat different, career- ot 
labor and duty open to both ; and, it is readily admitted, should 
and must vary their modes of education and preparation aeeotd- 

jngiy- 

It may do for the man of books to plunge at once amid the cat- 
acombs of buried nations and languages, to soar away to Greece, 
or Ilome,or Nova-Zemb!a,Kamtschatka,andthe fixed stars, before 
he knows how to plant his own beans, or harness his own horse, or 
can tell whether the functions of his own body are performed by 
a heart, stomach, and lungs, or with a gizzard and gills. 

But for the man of work thus to bolt away at once from himself 
and all his pursuits in after life, contravenes the plainest pririci- 
ples of nature and common sense. No wonder such educators 
have ever deemed the liberal culture of the industrial classes an 
impossibility ; for they have never tried nor even conceived of any 
other way of educating them except that by which they are ren- 
dered totally unfit for their several callings in after life. — How 
absurd would it seem to set a clergyman to plowing and studying 
the depredations of blights, insects, the growing of crops, &c., &c. , 
in order to give him habits of thought and mental discipline for the 
pulpit; yet, this is nofhalf as ridiculous, in reality, as the reverse 
absurdity of attempting to educate the man of work in unknown 
tongues, abstract problems and theories, and metaphysical figments 
and quibbles. 

Some, doubtless, will regard the themes of such a course of ed- 
ucation as too sensuous and gross t« lie at the basis of a pui-e and 
elevated mental culture. But the themes themselves cover all pos- 
sible knowledge and all modes and phases of science, abstract, 
mixed, and practical. In short, the field embraces all that God 
has made, and all that human art has done, and if the created 
Universe of God and the highest art of man are too gross for our 
refined uses, it is a pity the "morning stars and the sons of God" 
did not find it out as soon as the blunder was made. But, in my 



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DTDUSTMAIi BDUCATIOIT.. 3t 

Opinion, these topics are oE quite a3 much eoneequence to the well- 
being o£ man and the healthtul development of mind, as the con- 
coction o£ the final noetram in medicine or the ultimate figment in 
theology and law, conjectures about the galaxy or the Greek 
accent; unless, indeed, the pedantic professional trifles of one man 
in a thousand are of more consequence than the daily vitid interests 
of all the rest of mankind. 

But can suehan institution be created and endowed? Doubtless 
it can be done, and done at once, if the industrial classes so decide. 
The fund given to this state by the general government, expressly 
for this purpose, is amply sufficient, without a dollar from any other 
source; and it is a mean, if not an illegal perversion of this fund, 
to use it for any other purpose. It was given to the people, the 
whole people of this state — not for a class, a party, or sect, or 
conglomeration of sects ; not for common schools, or family schools, 
or classical schools ; but for "An University," or seminary of a. 
high order, in which should of course be taught all those things 
which every class of the citizens most desire to learn — then- owa 
duty and business for life. This, and this alone, is an University 
in the true, original sense of the term. And if an Institution 
which teaches all that is needful only for the three professions of 
law, divinity, and medicine,is,therefore, an University, surely one 
which teaches all that is needful for ail the varied professions of 
human life, is far more deserving of the name and the endowments 
of an University. 

But in whose bands shall the guardianship and oversight ol this 
fund be placed, in order to make it of any real use for such a 
purpose ? I answer, without hesitation and without fear, that this 
whole interest should, from the first, be placed directly in the hands 
of the people, and the whole people, without any mediators or ad- 
visers, legislative or ecclesiastical, save only their own appointed 
agents, and their own jurors and courts of justice, to which, of 
course, all alike must submit. It was given to the people, and is 
the property of the people, not of legislators, parties, or sects, and 
they ought to have the whole control of it, so far as is possible 
consistently with a due security of the funds and needful stability 
of plans of action and instruction. This control I believe they 
will be found abundantly able to exercise ; and more than this no 
well informed man would desire. 

The reasons for placing it at once and forever beyond all legis- 
lative and ecclesiastical control, are obvious to all. For if under 
the former, it will continually exist as the mere tool of the dominant 
party, and theobjeot of jealous fear andhatred of their opponents; 
or else it will become the mere foot ball of all parties, to oe kick- 



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"j2 industrial EDUCATIOIT, 

v.d hither and thither as tlie party interests and passion of the hour 
may dictate. We well know how many millions of money have 
been worse than thrown away by placing professed seminaries of 
learning under the influence of party passion, through legislative 
^^ontrol. And it is surely a matter of devout gratitude that cur 
legislators have had wisdom enough to see and fee! this difficulty, 
and that they have been led, from various causes, to hold this fund 
free from all commitment to the present hour, when the people 
begin to be convinced that they need it, and can safely control it ; 
and no legislator but an aristocrat or a demagogue would desire 
to see it in other hands. 

The same difficulty occurs as regards sects. — Let the institution 
be managed ever so well by any one party or sect, it is stii! cer- 
tain their opponents will stand aloof from it, if not oppose and 
malign it for that very reason. ' Hence, all wiU see at once, that 
the greatest possible care should be taken to free it from, not only 
the reality, but even from the suspicion of any such inSuenee. — 
Should the party in power, when the charter may be granted, ap- 
point a majority of the hoard of trustees from the parties in the 
minority, it would show a proper spirit, and be in all coming time, 
an example of true magnanimity, which their opponents could not 
fail to respect and to imitate, and which the people at large would 
highly approve, A victorious hero can afford to be generous as 
well as brave — none worthy of a triumph can afford to be otherwise. 
In all future appointments, also, the candidates should be elected 
with such an evident regard to merit, and disregard of all political 
and sectarian relations, as to ever carry the conviction that the 
equal good of the whole alone is sought. There can be no great 
difficulty in accomplishing all this, if it is well known in the outset 
that the people will keep their eye closely upon that man, who- 
ever he may be, who by any bargaining for votes, or any dh-ect 
or indirect local, sinister, or selfish action or influence, or any 
evasion or postponement, or by any- desire to tamper and amend, 
merely to show himself off to advantage, shall in any way embar- 
rass or endanger this greatest of all interests ever committed to a 
free state — the interest of properly and worthily educating ail tht 
sons of her soil. Let the people set on such a man, if the miscre- 
ant wretch lives, for all future time, a mark as much blacker 
than the mark set on Cain, as midnight is darker than noon-day. 
This is a question, above all others, that a man who is a man, will 
desire to meet openly and frankly, like a man. Will our legisla- 
tors do it? I, for one, believe they will. I shall not believe the 
contrary till it is proved ; and I will even suggest, in general, a 
mode by which the great end may be safely gained. Let others, 



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INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION; -3^ 

however, suggest a better one, and- 1 will cheerfully accord with it. 
Let the Governor of the State nominate a board of trust for 
the Ihinds of the Institution. Let this board consist of five of the 
most able and discreet men in the State, and let at least four of 
them be taken from each of the extreme comers of the State, so 
remote from all proximity to the possible location of the Institu- 
tion, both in person and in property, as to be free from all sus- 
E'icion of partiality. Let the Senate confirm such nomination, 
et this board be sworn to locate the Institution from a regard 
to the interests and convenience of the people of the whole State. 
And when they have bo done let. them be empowered to elect twelve 
new members of their own body, with perpetual power of filling 
their own vacancies, each choice requiring a vote of two-thirds of 
the whole body, and upon any failure to elect at the appointed an- 
nual meeting, the Governor of the State to £11 the vacancy for one 
year, if requested by any member of the board so to do. Let 
any member of the board who shall be absent from any part of its 
annual meetings, thereby forfeit his seat, unless detained hy sick- 
ness, certified at the time, and the board on that occasion Itll the 
vacancy, either by his re-election, or by the choice of some other 
man. Let the funds then, by the same act, pass into the hands 
of the trustees so organized, as a perpetual trust, they giving prop- 
er bonds for the same, to be used for the endowment and erection 
of an Industrial University for the State of Diinois, 

This board, so constituted, would be, and ought to be,, respon- 
sible to no iegisiatnre, sect, ot party, but directly to lite people 
themaeives— to each and every citizen, in the courts of law and 
justice, so that, should any trustee of the institution neglect, abuse, 
or pervert his trust to any selfish, local, political, or sectarian end, 
or show himself incompetent for ita exercise, every other member 
of the board and every citizen at large should have the right of 
impeaching him before the proper court, and, if guilty, the couit 
should discharge him and order his place to be filled by a more 
suitable man. Due care should be taken, of course, to guard 
against malicious prosecutions. 

Doubtless objections can be urged against this plan, and al! 
others that can be proposed. Moat of them may be at once anti- 
cipated, but there is not space enough to notice them here. Some, 
for example,, cherish an ardent and praiseworthy desire for the 
perfection of our common schools, and desire still longer to use 
that fund for that purpose. But no one imagines that it can long 
be kept for that use, and if it could, I think it plain that the low- 
er schools of al! sorts would be far more benefitted by it here than 
in any otherplace it could be put. 



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84 INDnSTRUI. EWJCATIOW. 

Others may feel » little alarm, when, for the first timeintha 
history of the world, they see the millions throwing themaelTes &I00E 
from tUi political and ecclesiastical control, and attempting to 
devise a system of liberal education for themselves : but on mature 
reflection we trust they will approve the plan: or if they are too old 
to change, their children will. 

I shall enter upon no special picas in fayorof this plan of dis- 
poaing of our State fund, I am so situated in life that it cannot 
possibly do me any personal good ; save only in the just pride of 
seeing the interests of my brethren of the industrial class cared for 
and promoted, as in such an age and such a state they ought to 
be. If they want the benefit of such an institution they can have, 
it. If they do not want it, I have not another word to say. In 
their own will, alone, lies their own destiny, and that of ^eir 
children. 

Respectfully submitted, 

J. B. TURNER- 



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SPKINGFIELD CONVENTION. 



The Second Conventios was held at Springfield, June 8, 1852. 
A controversy there arose between the members ol tbe Industrial 
Convention, and the advocates and representatives oE some few of 
the old classical and theological colleges, wlio were admitted by 
courtesy to participate iti the debates of the convention, which 
consumed moat oEthe time of the convention, and but little, if any, 
impreasion for good, was made upon the public mind. 

These colleges desired to be made, themselves, the instruments 
through which the fuods of the State should be applied to the ed- 
ucation ottbe indus trial classes. This, the representatives of these 
classes haveat all times, in all their conventions, unanimously and 
steadfastly, opposed. 

Ai; that meeting, however, the following memorial was presented 
to the Legislature : 

ILLINOIS INDUSTRIAL CONVENTION. 

Memorial of the Industrial Convention to the Senate and House of 

Representatives of the Stale o£ Illinois. 

The Convention of the friends o£ the Industrial University, pro- 
posed to the cftosideration of the people of Illinois, by the Gran- 
ville convention, whose report is alluded to in the message of the 
Governor of the State, beg leave to submit to the consideration of the 
Senators andReprescotatives of the people, the following memorial: 

But three general modes have been publicly proposed for the use 
of the College and Seminary funds of the State. 

I. The perpetual roatinuance of their use forcommon school 
pnrposos, is not seriously expected by any one, but only their tem- 
porary use as a loan for this noble object. 

H, The equal distribution of their proceeds among the ten or 
twelve colleges in charge of the various religious denominations of 
the State, either now in existence or soon to arise and claim their 
share in these funds, and the equally just claim of Medical and 
qtherlnstitutions for their share, it is thought by your memorial- 
ista, would produce too great a division to render these funds of 
much practical value either to these iMtitutions or to the people 
of the State. Nor do they consider that it would make any prac- 
tical differeaoe, in thia regard, whether the funds were paid directly 



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"S ISDUSTRIAL EDUCATIOH. 

Iw the State over to the Trustees of these Institutions, or disbursed 
indirectly through a new hoard of overseers or Regents to be called 
the University of Illinois. The plan oF attempting to elect by State 
authority, some smaller number of these Institutions to enjoy the 
benefit of the funds, on the one hand, to the exciusion of others, 
or attempting to endow them all so as to fit them for the great 
practical uses of the industrial classes of the State, we trust your 
honorable bodies will see at onee to be still more impracticable and 
absurd, if not radically unequal and unjust in a free State like 

QUTS. 

in. Your memorialists therefore desire not the dispersion by 
any mode, eitlier direct or indirect, of these funds ; hut their con- 
tinued preservation and concentration for the equal use of all class* 
es of our citizens, and especially to meet the pressing necessities 
of the great industrial classes and interests of the State, in accor- 
dance with the principles suggested in the message of his Excel- 
lency the Governor of the State, to youi' honorable bodies; and 
also in the recent message of Governor Hunt of New York, to the, 
legislature of that State, and sanctioned by the approval of many 
of the wisest and most patriotic statesmen in this and other States. 

The report of the Granville Convention of farmers, herewith 
submitted and alluded to, as above noticed in the message of our 
Chief Magistrate, may be considered as one, and as onlj/ one, of 
the various modes in which this desirable end may be reached, and 
is alluded to in this connexion as being the only published document 
of any convention on this subject, and as a general illustration of 
what your petitioners would desire, when the wisdom of the Sena- 
tors and Representatives of the people shall have duly modified 
and perfected the general plan proposed, so as to fit it to the pres- 
ent resources and necessities of the State, 

We desire that some beginning should be made, as soon as our 
statesmen may deem prudent so to do, to realize the high and 
noble ends for the people of the State, proposed in each and alf 
of the documents above alluded to. And if possible on a sufficiently 
extensive scale, to honorably justify a successful appeal to con- 
gress, in conjunction With eminent citizens and statesmen in other 
:r^tates, who have expressed their readiness to co-operate with us, 
for an appropriation of public lands for each State in the Union 
forthe appropriate endowmentofUniversities for the liberal educa- 
tion of the Industrial Classes in their several pursuits in each State 
iu the Union. 

And in. this rich, and at least prospectively, powerfiil State, 
acting in co-operation with the vast energies and resources of this 
mighty confederation of united republics, even very small begin- 



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WDUSTaiAL EDUCATION* 



nings properly directed, may at no very remote day result in con- 
sequences more wonderful and beneficent than the most daring 
mind would now venture to predict or even conceive. 

In the appropriation of those Hunds your memorialists would 
especially desire that a department for normal school teaching, to 
thoroughly qualify teachers for county and district sehook, and 
an appropriate provision for the practical education of tlie desti- 
tute orphans of the State, should not be forgotten. 

We think that the object at which we aim must so readily com- 
mend itself to the good sense and patriotism, both of our people, 
rulers and statesmen, when once fully and clearly understood, titat 
we refrain from all argument in its favor. 

We ask only that one institution for the numerous Industrial Clasa- 
es.tho teachers and orphans of this State, and of each State, should 
be endowed on the same general principles, and to the same relativt- 
extent as some one of the numerous Institutions now existing in each 
State for the more especial beneht of the comparatively very lim- 
ited classes in the three learned professions. If this la deemed im- 
moderate or even impracticable we will thankfully accept even less. 

As to the objection that Statestannot properly manage literary 
institutions, all history shows that the States in this country, ani 
in Europe, which have attempted to manage them by proper meth- 
ods, constituting a vast majority of the whole, have fully succeed- 
ed in their aim. While the few around us which have attempted 
to endow and organize them on wrong principles — condemned by 
all experience, have of course failed. Nor can a State charter 
and originate Railroads or manage any other interest, except by 
proper methods and through proper agents. And a people or ";<. 
State that cannot learn in time, to manage properly and efficiently 
all these interests, and especially the great interests of self educa- 
tion, is obviously unfit for self-government, which we are -not wil- 
ling as yet to admit in reference to any State in the Un on, ami 
least of all our own. 

With these sentiments deeply impressed on our hearts, and ors 

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 submmitted. 

By order of the Committee of the Convention, 

J. B. TURNER, Chair7nan. 

TbeTaiRD Convkstion was held at Chicago, Nov. 24, 1852. 

At this convention much important business was transacted, and 
many ibtereating views suggested, and speeches the-reon, inade and 
tepgrted. 



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38 tNDUSTRlAS EDUCATION. 

AmoTjg Other things, it was resolved to organize "The liTOUfl' 
TRIAL Leagtib OF THE State OF Illinois," which has since been 
chartered by our Legislature, empowered to raise a fund, by sub- 
scriptions from the members, of ten cents each, per annum, and 
by voluntary contributions, to be applied to the forwarding of the 
objects of the convention, and promoting the interests of the 
industrial classes. 

1st. "By disseminating information both written and printed on 
this subject." 

2d. "By keeping up a concert of iietion among the friends of 
the industrial classes." 

3d. "By the employment of lecturers, to address citizens in all 
parts of the State," "Prof. J. B. Turner, of Jacksonville wa* 
appointed principal Director." 

"John Gfage,ofLakecounty,Eronson Murray, of La Salle co.j 
Dr. L. 8. Pennington, of Whiteside co., J. T. Little, of Fulton 
CO., andWm. A, Pennell, of Putnam co,, Associate Directors." 

It was also "resolved, that this Convention memorialize Con- 
gress for the purpose of obtaining a grant of public lands to estab- 
lish and endow Industrial Institutions in eachaod every State in the 
Union." 

"The p5an for an Industrial University, submitted by Prof, 
Turner to the Granville Convention," (reprinted above,) "was 
then called for, and a motion passed to discuss its principles by 
sections; whereupon, after thus reading, and discussing of its vari- 
ous sections, the general pri^ciple3 of the plan were approved." 

It was also "voted unanimou?ly, that a department for the 
education of common-school teachers be considered an essential 
feature of the plan." 

"Prof. J. B. Turner, of Jacttsonvilie, Wm. Gooding, of Lock- 
port, and Dr. John A. Kennicott, of Northlield, were appointed n 
committee to report a plan to the next convention, and to memo- 
rialize the Legislature for the application of the college and sem- 
inary funds to this object, in accordance with the acts and ordi- 
nances of Congress, &c." 

"J. B, Turner, L. S. Bullock and Ira L. Peck, were also 
appointed a committee to prepare an address to the citizens of this 
State, onthe subjectof Industrial Education, and the establish- 
ment of an Industrial Institution." 

The FouuTH Cosvbntion was holdcn at Springfield on the 8th 
of January, 1853. 

At this meeting, also, a great many items of a miscellftneom 
character were brought before the Convention, and dieeussed and 
decided upon ; in almost every case by a unanimous vote. 



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IHD1J3TRUL EDUCATION. 39 

The greatest harmony and good feeling prevailed among all the 
membera and delegates, and tlie representatives and executive 
officers of the people, in the Legislature ; many of whom, from all 
parts of the State, took the deepest interest in the subject, and 
made noble and eloquent speeches at their evening session, in the 
Senate chamber in its behalf. It was 

Resolved, That inasmuch as any detailed plan o£ public instruc- 
tion cao only be decided and acted upon by lie Trustees, Directors 
or other officers of the desu-ed Inetitution, when created, it is not 
expedient to attempt to fix upon any such details in any prelimin- 
ary conventions of the people ; and that the committee appointed 
to report on that subject, he discharged from further duty. . 

The duties and terms of office of the League, were, also, pre- 
scribed by this convention. 

After tie adjourament of the convention, the following memorial 
was written, at the request of the committee, by tbe author and 
signed by the President of the convention and presented to tb« 
Jegislatureio accordance with a resolution passed by the convention: 

mBPIORIAL 

OF THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL CONVENTION OF THE STATE Ot 
ILLINOIS. 

To the. Honorable Senate and House of Representatives of 
the Slate of Illinois : 

We would respectfully represent : That we are members of thit 
indiistrial classes of this state, actively and personally engaged i)-. 
agricultural and mechanical pursuits. We are daily made to fee 
our own practical ignorance , and the misapplication of toil and la- 
bor , and the enormous waste of products , means , materials , ami 
resources that result from it. We ai-e aware that all this evil tv 
ourselves and our country, results from a want of knowledge or 
those principles and laws of nature that underlie cur various pro ■ 
fessions , and of the proper means of a practical application of ex- 
isting knowledge to those pursuits. We rejoice to know that on ■ 
brethren in the several leai'ned professions have to a good degr«'j 
availed themselves of tJiese advantages, and have for years en- 
joyed their benefit. They have universities and colleges , with ap - 
paratus , libraries volutainous and vast, able and learned prof a- - 
. 8OT9 and teachers, constantly discovering new facts , and appljiuj^ 
nil known principles and truths directly to the practical uses of tbei;- 
Beveral professions and pursuits. This is as it should be. But -nt 
have neither universities , colleges , books , libraries , apparatus, or 
teachers, adapted or designed to ctqcentrate and a>pp)y even .»" 



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40 ISDUSTRIAL EDUCATIOS. 

existing knowledge to our pursuits, much less have we the roeana 
of efficiently exploring and examining the vast practical unknown 
that daily lies all around us , spreading darkness and ruin upon our 
best laid plana , blighting our hopes , diminishing our resources , 
and working ine^'itable evil and loss to ourselves , to our families 
and to our country. Some think one half — no iTitolligent man 
thinks that less than one-third or ono-fourth of the entire labor 
and products of our state , are made an annual sacrifice to this 
needless ignorance and waste. Knowledge alone , here . is power , 
and our relief is as clearly obvious as our wants. We need the 
same thorough and practical application of knoweldge to our pur- 
suits , that the learned professions enjoy in theira , through their 
universities and theii- literature , schools and libraries that have 
grown out of them. For even though knowledge may exist , it is 
perfectly powerless until properly applied , and we have not the 
means of applying it. What sort of generals and soldiers 
would all our national science (and art) make if wehad no milita- 
ry academies to take that knowledge and apply it directly and spe- 
cifically to military life ? 

Are our classic universities , our law , medicine , and divinity 
schools adapted to make good genei-als and warriors ? Just as 
well as they are to make farmers and mechanics , and no better. — 
Is the defence , then , of oar resources of more actual consequencL' 
than their production? Why then should the state care for the 
one , and neglect the other ? 

According to recent publication only 1 in 260 of the population 
of our own state are engaged in professional life, and not one in 
200 in the Union generally. A great proportion even of these nev- 
er enjoyed tho advantages of ourclassical and professional schools. 
But there are in the United States 225 principal universities, col- 
leges and seminaries, schools, &;c,, devoted to the interest of tho 
professional classes, besides many smaller ones, while there is not 
a, single one , with liberal endowments , designed for the liberal 
and practical education of the industrial classes. No West Point 
lis yet beams upon the horizon of their hope ; ti'ue , as yet , our 
boundless national resources keep us, like the childi'en of Japhet 
emigrating from the Ark , from the miserable degredation anil 
want of older empires; but the resources themselves lie all undevel- 
oped in some directions , wasted and misapplied in others , and rap- 
idly vanishing away as centuries roll onward, under the ignoranpn 
nr unskill fulness that directs them. We , the members of the in- 
dustrial classes are still compelled to work empriieally and blindly , 
without needful books, achoolsormeans, by the slow process of that 
individual experience that li^ and dies with the man. Our pro- 



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mDUSTRIAL BDUCATION. 41 

fessional brethren , through tlieir uiiiversitiea , schools , teachers . 
and libraries , combine and concentrate the practical experience ol' 
ages in each man's life. We need the same. 

In monarchial Europe , through tlieir polytechnic and agricul- 
tural schools , some successful effort has been made , in some de- 
partments and classes , to meet this great want of the age. 

But in our democratic country , though entirely industrial and 
practical in all its aims and ends , no such effort has been efficient- 
ly made. We have in our own State no such institutions , and nn. 
-practical combination of resources and means , that can ever pro- 
duce one worthy of the end. We have not even a "Normal 
School" for the education of our teachers, nor half a supply ol' 
efficient teachers even for our own common schools ; and never can 
■have without more attention to the indispensable means for their 

E reduction. Hence , our common sciiools are, and must continue t-i 
e , to a great extent , inefficient and languishing , if not absolute 
nuisances on our soil, as in some cases they now are. But thi' 
common school interest is the great hope of our country; and we only 
desire to reader it efficient and useful , in the only way it can be 
done ; by rearing up for it competent and efficient teachers, in tSu' 
normal department of our industriai universities. Knowing that 
knowledge , like light and water , runs downward , not upward, 
through human society , we would begin with the suns and foun- 
tains, and not with the candles and puddles, and pour the light 
and water of life down through every avenue of darkness below . 
and not begin with the darkness and drought , and attempt t'l 
evolve and force it upward. No state ever did or ever will suc- 
ceed by this latter process. The teacher is the first man sought , 
and the life and light of the whole thing , from the university dowri- 
ward. 

To this end, concentration is the first indispensable step. Leav- 
ing ail our common school funds untouched , as they now are , tbi- 
proposed distribution of our university fund , amounting to about 
J150,000, will illustrate this point. The annual interest o£ this , 
at 6 per cent, , is about ^9,000. If this should be divided among 
our ten or fifteen colleges, it would give them only from ^600 to 
^900 each , per annum. Divided among our hundred counties , 
it would give $90 to each county , for a high school or any other 
purpose. Divided as it now is among the million of our people , it 
gives 9 mills, or less than one cent to each person. Concentrated 
upon an industrial university , it would furnish an annual corps o; 
skillful teachers and lecturers , through its normal school, to go 
through all our towns and counties , create , establish and instruct 
lyceums, high schools and common schools , of all sorts, anj 



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43 MDCrSTRIAL BDDCATTCB, 

througt its agricultural and meclianical departments , concentrating 
and diffusing the benefits ol: practical knowledge and experienco 
«ver all our employments and pursuits, our farms and shopSL 
Here as elawhere , ttie sun must exist betore the diamonds and dew- 
drops can shine. The mountfttn heights must send down their rills 
and tlieir torrents, gathered from their own flood and the bound- 
less resources of the ocean and the sky, before the desert can 
blossom as the rose. Money , however much or little , 
concentrated in logs, clapboards and brick , enclosing a herd of 
listiesa , uneasy , and misehievoua children, cannot maSie a eom- 
moQ school. The living teacher must be there— living not dead; 
for dead teachers only make dead scholars the more dead. Nor 
can grammar , language , metaphysics , or abstract science , how- 
ever accurate, voluminous and vast, ever diffuse new life and new en- 
ergy into our industrial pursuits. There, practical apparatus, the 
thorough and accurate needful experiments , as well tho living and 
practical teachers are needed, in order even to begin the gi-eatwork. 
This is necessarily expensive , quite beyond even the anticipated 
resources of our existing institutions. Hence again , we need con- 
centration , and not a miserable useless and uttoriy wasteful dif- 
fussion of our resources and means. 

Throughout our State , and throughout the whole civilized world, 
in all ages.whert there has been most neglect of universities and high 
eerainaries, and most reliance placed by the people in the miser- 
able pittance doled out to them by the state , like so many paupers, 
for the support of common schools, precisely there the common 
school will be found , for the inevitable reasons above indicated , 
most inefficient , weak and worthless , if not positive nuisances to 
society , and , whenever the reverse is found , the reverse influeneev 
of life , light , animation and hope beam forth from thy schools 
at once. 

We repeat it , the common school is our great end , our iaal 
hope and final joy. Bat we would reach and reanimate it under 
the guidance of practical common sense , as all experience shows 
il must be done , as it only can bo done , ami no would reach the 
vital, practical interests of our industrial pursuits, by precisely the 
»arae meana , and on precisely the same well known and thorough- 
ly tried plans and principles. We seek no novelties. We desire 
no new principles. We only wish to apply , to the great in- 
terest of the common school and the industrial classes , precisely 
the same principles o£ mental discipline and thorough scientific 
practical instrtiation , in all their pursuits and interests , which are 
now applied to the professional and military classes. 

The effect this must have in disciplining , elevating and refining 



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ISDOKTRIAL EDUCATION. w 

the minds and roorals of our people , increasing their wealth and 
iheir power at homo , and their respect abroad , developing not on ■ 
ly the resources of their minds , but their soil and treasures of 
(aineral , and perfecting all their materials , products and arts , 
cannot but be seen by every intelligent mind. 

No other enterprise so richly deserves, and so urgently demands 
the united effort of our national strength. 

We would, therefore, reapectfully^petitiontlie honorable Senate 
and House of Representatives of the State of Illinois, that they pre- 
Bont a united memorial to the Congress now assembled at Washington 
to appropriate to each State in the Union an amount of pubUc lands 
not less in value than five hundred thousand dollars , for the liber- 
al endowment of a system of Industrial universities ; one in each 
state in the Union , to co-operate with each other and with the 
Smithsonian Institute at Washington , for the more liberal and 
practical education of our industrial classes and their teachers , in 
their YariouB pursuits , for the production of knowledge and litera- 
ture needful in those pursuits , and 'developing to the fullest and 
most perfect extent the resources of our soil and our arts , the vir- 
tue and intelligence of our people , and the true glory of our com- 
mon country. 

We would further petition that the executive and legislature of 
our sister States, be invited to co-operate with us in this enter- 
prise , and that a copy of the memorial of this legislature be for- 
warded by the governor to the governors and Senates of the sever' 
al States. 

We would also, petition that the University fund of this State, if 
not at once applied to these practical uses , be allowed to remain 
where it now is , and its interest applied to present u^es , until such 
time as the people shall be prepared to direct it to some more 



By order of the convention. 

ERONSON MURRAY , President. 

A similar memorial was submitted to the convention hy the com- 
mitte consisting of his Excellency Gov. French , Hon. David L, 
Gregg and Dr. L. S- Pennington, appointed by the Chicago Con- 
vention and accepted and forwarded to Congress , as ordered by 
that Convention. 

These memorials were presented to the Senate and Representa- 
tivaa of Illinois then in session , and the merits of tlie plan fully 
discussed by able and eloquent advocates , and the following reso- 
lutions were unanimously passed by both houses and received tbe 
approbation of the executive. 



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44 INDUBTalAL liDfCATIOS. 

RGSOHITIOSS 

Of the General ■J}.isembly of the State of Illinois , Relative 

to the Eslabfishment <f Industrial Universities , and for 

the Encouragement of Practical and General Educatiun 

among the People — Unanimously Adopted. 

Whereas, The spirit and progress of this age and country de- 
mand the culture of the highest order of intellectual attainment in 
tUeoretic and industrial science : And whertat , it is impossi- 
ble that our commerce and prosperity will continue to increa.-i,- 
without calling into requisition ail the elements ot: internal thrirt 
arising from the labors of tl\e farmer, the mechanic , and tho 
manufacturer , by every fostering effort within the reach of the 
government: And whereas , a system of Industrial Universities, 
liberally endowed in each State of the Union , co-operative witii 
each other , and the Smithsonian Institution at Washington , wouM 
develop a more liberal and practical education amongthe people, 
tend the more to intellectuaiize the rising generation , and eminent- 
ly , conduce to the virtue , infcUigence and true glory of our common 
couHtry therefore , be it 

Resolved , by the House of Representatives , the Senate 
concurring herein , 'Iliat our Senators in Congress be instruc- 
ted , and our Representatives be requested , to use their bostexer- 
tions to procure the passage of a law of Congress donating to eacii 
State in the Union an amount of public lands not less in value tliaii 
five hundred thousand dollars , for the liberal endowment of u 
system of Industrial Universities , one in each State in the Union , 
to co-operate with each other, and with the Smithsonian Institution 
at Washington , for the more liberal and practical education or 
our industrial' classes and their teachers ; a liberal and varied edu- 
cation adapted to the manifold want of a practical and enterpris- 
ing people , and a provision for such educational facilities , bein^^ 
in manifest concurrence with the intimations of the popular wiil, 
it urgently detnands the united efforts of our national strength. 

Resolved, That the Governor is hereby authorized to forward a 
copy of the foregoing resolutions to our Senators and Representa- 
tives in Congress, and to the Executive and Legislature of eacij 
of our sister States , inviting them to co-operate with us in thii 
meritorious enterprise. JOHN REYNOLDS, 

Speaker of the Houieof Representatives. 
G. KOERNER, 
Speaker of the Senate. 

Appeotbd, February 8, 1853. J. A. MATTESON. 

A true copy: Attest, 

ALEXANDElt STABNE, Sec'y of State. 



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INDTTSTBtAL EDUCATION. •!» 

We give the following aa a sample of tbe sentiments of tbe 
press , at home and abroaj upon the above resolutions : 

"Education fob the People." — The New York Tribune oi 
Feb. 2Sth , has the following remarks , subjoined to the joint res- 
olutions passed by our General Assembly , relative to the estab- 
lishment of Industrial Universities , and for the encouragement of 
practical and general education among the people : 

"Here is the principle contended for by the friends of practi- 
(^al education abundantly confirmed, with a plan for its immediate 
realization. And it is worthy of note, that one of the most ex- 
tensive of: public land (or new) States proposes a magnificent do- 
nation of public lands to each of tbe States, in furtherance of 
this idea. Whether that precise form of aid to the project is most 
judicious and likely to be effective, we will not here consider. 
Suffice it that tlie legislature of Illinois has taken a noble step 
forward, in a most liberal and patriotic spirit, for which its raem- 
bei-s will be heartily thanked by thousands throughout the Union. 
We feci that this step has materially hastened the coming of sci- 
entific and practical education for all who desire and are willing 
to work for it. It cannot come too soon. — III. Jour." 

The "Central Illinois Times," a newspaper published at Bloom- 
ington, gives utterance to the following, affixed to the resolution* 
respecting the establishment of Industrial Universities : 

"The above is undoubtedly of more interest and importance to 
the people o£ this State, than any measure which came before the 
legislature during the late session. It contains a wholesome prin- 
ciple of prosperity and advancement, which will, if fully carried out, 
tend to elevate and improve the condition of the honest hardwork' 
ing farmer. We have always held that the first object of govern- 
ment is to afford protection to the working classes, for in them 
lies the strength and glory of the nation. Without protection 
they will become weak, mactive and careless, with it they are en- 
couraged at every step, and reap reward abundantly to satisfy 
every want. 

The resolutiocs meet our approbation fully, and we hope that 
other States, and Congress, may well consider the matter, and fi- 
nally moirid it into a law." 

It may not be improper here to give a few extracts, showing 
how the enterprise is regarded by the public press, and by able 
and influential divines and statesmen in other States. The testi- 
monials on hand are very numerous, but space here can be spar- 
ed for only a very few extracts, as specimens of the whole. 

It will be needless to remark upon the sentiments of the press 



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4G ' INDUSTRIAL EDUCATIOK,- 

at home, or in the West, generally, aa that is sufficiently well knonn 
to all. 

Saya Governor Hunt, in his message to the New York legisia- 
Cure 

" Much interest has been iiia'iife''ted for some years past in fa- 
vor of creatmg an institution tor the advancement o£ agricultur- 
al science and of knowledge in the mechanics arts Ihe views in 
favor ot this meisure expressed m my last an lual communica- 
tion remun unchanged Mv impression'* aio stili favorable to the 
plan of combmmg in one college two distinct departments for in- 
Etruction in agiicultuial ind mei-hanieal science , I would respect- 
fully recommend thit a si fllcient portion ot the proceeds of the 
next sale ot lands for taxe'- be appropriated to the eieLtion of an 
mstitntion which shall stand as a lasting memorial of our munifi- 
cence, and contnbuti, to tlie diflusion ot intelligence among the 
producing classes, during all future time " 

Similar sentiments expressed by our own Hte Cbiet Magistrate, 
(Jovernor French, will be remembere i by ill 

SayB the Hon Marshal P Wilder, betori, the BuWrne Agricul- 
tural Society, Mass.: 

" For want oE knowledge, millions of dollars arc now, annually 
lost by the commonwealth, by the misapplication of capital and 
labor in industry. On these points we want a system of experiments 
directed by scientific knowledge. Are they not important to our 
farmers ? Neither the agrioaltural papers, periodicals or societies, 
or any other agents now in operation, are deemed sufficient for alt 
that is desirable. 

We plead that the means and advantages oE a professional ed- 
ucation should be placed witliin the reach ot our farmers. 

This would not only be one of tne most important steps ever 
taken by the commonwealth for its permanent advaiicsaient and 
prosperity, but would add another wreath to her renown for ihe pro- 
tection of our industry and the elevation of her Sons. 

Said Rev. Mr. Hitchcjek, president of Amherst College, — ^wbile 
advocating the endowments ot au oh institutions before the Massa- 
chusetts Board of Agriculture, 1851 : 

" I have been a lecturer on chemistry for twenty years. I have 
tried a great many experiments, in that time, buti do not know 
of any experiments so delicate or so difficult as the farmer is try- 
ing every week. The experiments of the laboratory are not to be 
oompared to them. You have a half dozen sciences which are 
ooacemed in the operation of a farm. There is to be a delicate 
balancing of all these, as every farmer knows. To suppose that 
a mania going to be able, without any knowledge of these seiencea 



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IKDCSTMAL EDUCATION.- 4T 

tomaie improvements in agriculture by haphazard experiments, is, 
it seems to me, absurd. 

He spoke of the 350 similar schools of which he gave some ac- 
count on his return from Europe, mostly of recent (mgio, and 
Bays: 

" This subject has made such rapid progress in EJurope, witbia 
a few years, that 1 was perfectly amazed to find the facts develop 
themselves as they did, one after another. I do not believe there 
La a class of students of any kind, in our country, who would be 
able to answer one-tenth of the questions which those young men 
answered very readily," (that is in the European agricultural 
lohools,) — "and going out, as they do, to take charge of other 
Bchools, they will accomplish much for the benefit of their country, 
as well as by their example in applying their principles for other 
farmers. The people must do this thing — if the people are not 
ready to force government to help them, it wiil do no good. It 
mftst be a weighty concern ; and individuals,-— one would sup- 
pose, would sink under it," 

Such are the suggestions of one of our most able and experienc- 
ed scientific teachers, ,who has, probably, taken more pains t« in-- 
veatigate the subject practically, espocialiy during his tour in Eu- 
rope, tiian any other man iu the country. 

At thi^ meeting, after a most thorough discussion of the subject 
by eminent scientific and practical men present, the Massachusetts 
Board of Agricalture "resolved that a thorough systematic course 
of education, is as necessary to prepai-e the cultivator of the soil, 
for pre-eminence in his calling, as to secure excellence in any of 
the schools of science or art; — that for want of such an education, 
millions of dollars, and a vast amount of time, and energy ara 
annuiilly lost tothe commonwealth, and that the yeomanry have a 
rightto claim from the government the same fostering Ciire, which 
is extended to other great interests of the community." 

In the memorial to the legislature of Massachusetts, the memo- 
rialists say: "Your memorialists are not aware, that it is any 
more easy to get a thorough knowledge of husbandry by individ- 
ual exertion aod private study, than it is to acquire, in that way, 
ft competent knowledge of law, medicine or divinity, and your me- 
morialists know of nowayby which that knowledge can be attained, 
but by a regular course of instruction." 

This memorial is signed by some of the most eminent scholars 
and civiliaos of Massachusetts. Among them appear the name* 
of the Honorable Ma,bsuai. P. WiL»BR,Honorable Eoward Eveb- 
BTT, Honorable Hbsrt W. Coshman, and John W. Lincoln, Jtc. 

Do these gentlemen know anything about scholarship, edncation, 



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48 INDDSTRIAL EDOCAXIOH. 

praetical life and social want, or are they also mere visionary 
cnthiisiasts, seeking to turn the world upside down? 

Massachusetts LuaisLAiritE. — We find tKe following in tho 
proceedings of the Legislature of Massachusetts. The proposition 
of Mr. Pomeroy was received with marked satisfaction, and was 
read and ordered to be printed. 

Mr. Pomeroy, of Southampton, on leava given, introduced tho 
following : 

RESOLVES CONCERNING AGRICULTURE. 

Whereat, In view of the increased alfention devoted to theoretical and praclic- 
»l agriculture, Massaetiusetts earnestly desires that there he increased facilitiei 
afforded for acquiring a more complete and liberal agricultural education, and 

Whtreai, This and every other Stale in the Union is largely interested in effort) 
to develop our agricultural resources to an extent worthy of a nation of farmers, 
therefore 

i^uI.That MaiSB 

'■!^ri™lla.rii( College, which shall be to the rural sciences, what the West Point 
AcadenlF is to the military, for the purpose of educating teachers and professor] 
for serrice in all the States of the Republic. 

Baolved. That copies of these j'esolutions be sent bv his Excellency, the Gov- 
einor, to our Senators and Representatives at Washington, with the request that 
the subject be brought before the two hoiises of Congress. 

A convention on the subject of a practical national system of 
university education, was held at Albany, also, Jan. 26, 1853. 
This convention was numerously attended by the great and illus- 
trious luminaries of the State, the church and colleges of the Nortli 
and East, A committee of twenty-one was appointed to report 
a plan. 

Among these appear the names of the venerable President Way- 
land, of Brown University, Bishop Potior, of Pennsylvania, Wash- 
ington Irving, Gov. Hunt and Senator Dix of New York, Presi- 
dent Hitchcock, of Amherst College, Professors Webster, Dewey, 
Henry, Bache, Mitchell, of Cincinnati, Pierce of Cambridge, &c. 

Rev. Dr. Kennedy spoke of "'the want that had long been felt 
for institutions different from, those already established." - 

Professor C. S. Henry said, "the welfare of our country was in 
a great degree dependent upon what should be done in regard to 
the proposed university." Rev, Ray Palmer said," there was lack 
of opportunity for scientific men to perfect themselves in their, 
various pursuits, ' and desired that this want should be supplied to 
all parts of the country.' " 

Rev. Dr. Wykoff said, "the first desideratum to the establish- 
ment of the institution was a conviction of its importance. When 
the souls of men are fired up, the money will not be wanting. He 



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rSDUSTBIAL EDUCATION. 49 

believed that the proper spirit was abroad — a feeling that would 
redound to the honor and benefit of the peonle, and that the work 
would be done. The enterprise was one for the masses. It would 
open the path of knowledge for alt the youth in the land, and from 
the common school lo the hif^heat university, he would liiie to see 
our educational institutions thrown freely open to all." 

Prof. Henry said, "he would bid the enterprise God speed! He 
deprecated the idea of attempting to establish a university at a 
moderate outlay. One fitted for the wants of this country, 
should throw open its lecture rooms freely, to all who should wish 
to avail themselves of their advantages. It should be the com- 
plete development of the principle which lies at the foundation of 
■©ur common schools." 

Rev. President Wayland said, " such an establishment in New 
York would be an example, which, ho believed, would be followed 
in other States. A university with a thousand students would 
abundantly sustain itself; and he thought the needed expense 
would not bo so great as some gentlemen anticipated." 

Again — (fo these gentlemen know anything about the practical 
■sulyect of education in this countiy? 

Said the lamented Downing, in the last number of the Horticul- 
turist he ever edited, " The leaven for the necessity for education 
■among the Industrial Classes, begins to work, we are happy to 
perceive, inmany parts of the country. At a Farmers' Conven- 
tion in Illinois, our correspondent, Prof. Turner, of that State, 
submitted a, plan for such an educational institution, which has 
.since been published in pamphlet form. 

We think the importance of the subject a sufficient apology for 
■allowing the Professor to be heard by a large audience. 

It is not often that the weak points of an ordinary collegiate 
education are so clearly exposed, and the necessity of working- 
men's universities so plainly demonstrated." He then republishes 
the plan. See Horticulturist, July 1852, p. 306. 

Said the editor of the N. York Tribune, in the editorial prefac- 
ing his republication of the same plan, "the great idea of a higher 
or thorough education for the sons and daughters of farmers, me- 
-dianics and laborers, is everywhere forcing itself on the public 
attention. Our race, needs instruction and discipline to qualify 
them for working, as well as for thinking and talking. They Keed 
something more than the hireling picks up at hap-hazard in the 
course of his daily toils. 

■For want of this knowledge in every department o£ rural indus- 
try, millions of dollars are annually wasted. 

Prof. -J. B. Turner, of Jacksonville, in behalf of ft convention at 



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5y I>iBU3TRIAl EDCCATIOS-. 

Granville, baa put forth a plan of an industrial university, viucit 
sets forth the pressing and common need, so forcibly, that we copy 
the larger portion of it." — [N. Y. Tribune, Sept. 4. '52. 

An editorial in the North American, (the oldest paper in Phil- 
adelphia,) on education and agriculture, said to be written by 
Judge Conrad, says ; " We have been gratified by the perusal 
of an address delivered by Prof. J. B. Turner, of Jacksonville, 
Ills. , before a convention of farmers held in that State, in support 
of the establishment of a university, in which agriculture and tho 
sciences shall be made a special branch of study. His suggestions 
are urged with zeal and ability, and his arguments are convincing, 
as to the need and importance of such institutions. There is no 
subject more worthy of the highest effort oE lie human intellect, 
nor one which has been, till recently, so culpably disregarded, if 
not condemned. 

To secure the diffusion and practical application of agricultural 
science, it seems necessary that it should be interwoven with gen- 
eral education, and its acquisition made aa object of early pride 
and animated ambition. 

Were this result attained by such institutions, as are suggested 
ly Prof, Turner, the consequences would bo net only an early 
application of science to agriculture, but valuable additions to the 
stock of knowledge, induced by stimulated enquiry and experiments. 

It cannot be doubted that with the advance of agricultural science 
weshould witness an almost incredible increase of production. 
The condition of the farmer would be improved to opulence, and 
the increased means would be attended with enlarged ability and 
leisure, that encourage devotion to the pursuits and tastes that 
elevate and refine the intellect and character. 

The triumph of a republic can only be successfuly achieved and 
permanently enjoyed by a people, the mass of whom, are an en- 
lightened yeomanry ,the proprietors of the land they till,T0O inde- 

PBSDENT TO BE BOUGHT, TOO EMLIUIITBBED TO BE CHEATED, AHD 
TOO POWERFUL TO BE CRUSHED. 

The proposition of Prof. Turner, seems to be entitled to pecul- 
iar and favorable consideration, and it is urged with a force of 
argument and eloquence that cannot fail to secure it. His address 
displays a full acquaintance with the subject, and his views are 
practical as well as profound, and are conveyed with elevation of 
style and earnestness of purpose. It is impossible to read his re- 
marks without realizing the importance of connecting agriculture, 
as a special subject with the course of American study. It is de- 
sirable as a corrective of the delusion, that induces bo gejiera! % 
cu«h into what arc termed — not from any pecuniary pvondse — the 



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1SDU8TWAL EDUCATIOS. 51 

liberal professions. Agriculture cultivated to its higlieat capacity, 
demands a miad as large and well stored as the liberal prof essions, 
and is at least equal to any huTaan pursuit in intellectual and 
moral elevation. Liberallj taught, it would become an object o£ 
ambition to those youths who now 'yearly swell the unhappy hosts 
diat over-crowd the professions. By making agriculture a liberal 
pursuit ; by connecting it with science, ( as it is already associated 
with all that is most beautiful in literature;) by elevating and 
refining it, it would be rendered a noble amusement to the luxurious 
— a noble distinction to the earnest and ambitious. This has al- 
ready been done to some extent : it remains that a system of edu- 
cation should render it general." 

Says Dr. Leo, the able and talented editor of the Southern 
Cultivator, the leading monthly periodical of the Southern plant- 
ing interest, published at Augusta, Georgia, in reply to a letter 
«nqmr!ng for some practical agricultural school for the sons of the 
planters, which letter he says, he publishes as a *' fair sample of 
scores of similar letters received every month :" "There is not a 
good agricultural school in the United States. The truth is, the 
Americaa people have yet to commence the study of agriculture as 
the combination of many sciences. Agriculture is the most pro- 
found and extensive profession that the progress of society and 
the accumulation of knowledge have developed. This is why the 
popular mind is so long in grasping it. Whether we consider the 
solid earth under our feet, the invisible atmosphere which we 
breathe, the wonderful growth and decay of all plants and animals, 
or the light, the heat, the cold, or the electricity of heaven, wb 
contemplate but the elements of rural science. The careful inves- 
tigation of the laws that govern all ponderable ajid imponderable 
agents, is the first step in the young farmer's education. To fa- 
cilitate his studies, he needs, as he pre-eminently deserves, a more 
comprehensive school than this country now affords. We notice 
la plan for an industrial university &c., by Prof. J, B, Turner, of 
Jacksonville, Ills. This subject is beginning to take a strong hold 
upon the minds of the people, and we are glad to see gentlemen 
of the talents and inluence of Prof, Turner, lending a helping 
hand to put a ball in motion, which, ultimately, will sweep down 
ail opposition. This plan of Prof. Turner, is full of valuable 
practical suggestions, and the memorial which accompanies it, or 
a similar one, should be forced upon the attention of the General 
Oovemment, and of every State in the Union." 

But these extracts must suf&ce to show both the interest taken in 
the general subject abroad, and also, in that particular aspect it 
lias assumed in this State, as prc.=ented in the report of the firet 
convpntion h4d at CfranviJle. 



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tifi ISDtlSTRIAL EDVCATIOK. 

tbis State S«minftrj'i3 established, it shall be upon the following 
rational and imparti-a! principiea : 

v. It shall be designed to furnish to the great Industrial classes of 
the State, our Farmers, Merchants and Mechanics, each in their own 
sphere, the same thorough, liberal and practical education in those 
various sciences underlying their several pursuits, and in all pro- 
cesses, principles, aod arts connected therewith, aa our colleges and 
professional schools now afford to their students of Theology, 
Medicine, Law, and the art of War ; and shall be provided with 
all needful apparatus, lands, groands, gardens, animals, drawings, 
models, instruments and engines, for the proper elucidation of the 
same — as other schools are provided with their necessary appara* 
tus. 

To combine the friends of this interest. The Industrial League 
OF Illinois was incorporated by the Legislature, February 1863. 

IsL With a. capital of $20,000, ti bo raised by members, 
fees and donations ; 

2d. With a Board of one chief Director andfive associates; whose 
«f6ce it shall be 

3d. To print and distribute books, pamphlets, and papers, ex- 
plaining the advantages and necessity of this system Mjf education. 

4th. To employ loetm-ers to visit all parts of the State for the 
same purpose, and to appoint agente for making collections, &c. 

5th. To circulate, and present, to the Legislature and to Con- 
gress, petitions, urging the adoption of this plan for a University 
and the liberal endowment thereof by Congress lands and by State 
funds in each State in the Union. 

6th. To receive from each member ten cents admission, and ten 
cents annual subscription, with fee for diploma and such voluntary 
donations as may be contributed, 

Tth. The funds so collected to be applied to the payment of lec- 
turers, agents, andofiicers,(other than Associate Directors,who shall 
receive no compensation for services,) to the payment of printing 
and such incidental expenses as shall be approved by the Beard : 
and on the establishment of a University as herein contemplated, 
any surplus funds in tbe treasury to be paid over to the treasury 
of such University. 

8th. Members of the Industrial League, who desire it, may 
withdraw from their membership upon giving notice to any agent 
of the Board, provided their dues are all paid, including those for 
the year in which they withdraw. 

9th. The year of the Lealgue commences with the first day ot 
«ach January. 

[The iind<rsiE«ed hereby eoter their nimea as nieinbers ot the '■ Indus trinl 
League o( Ulinpisj'Triiin ilie iljiie set opposite (huir names.] 



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