MRS. MARY TURNER CARRIEL AND DEAN INMAN

At Boulder marking site of Granville Convention, 1851, Granville,

plan presented and resolutions passed on that occasion, the fire of enthusiasm and grim endeavor that was kindled, the active campaign then started, were the beginnings, not only of education for the industries of Illinois, but of the establishment of a national system of universities for the industrial classes, at least one university in each of the states."

Immediately following the Granville Convention there was undertaken by a group of Illinois men, a campaign for industrial education that was to extend through many years, the far-reaching consequences of which few could ever imagine. In rapid succession there came within the next fourteen months, a series of three industrial educational conventions; memorials to the legislature and to Congress were written; a thousand pamphlets containing the Granville plan and address to the people were published and circulated throughout the country, to the press, state officials, representatives in Congress, educators and prominent citizens; an industrial league in the state was organized; lectures and addresses were given in various parts of the state; all in the interest of the "Illinois Idea,” a system of industrial state universities supported by federal grants-as initiated in Granville Convention.

And now the movement was on foot. The Illinois Congressmen, representatives in the main of an agricultural constituency, saw the tremendous possibilities of such a scheme. Richard Yates, Sr., then in Congress, was at once attracted by a measure of such commanding statesmanship. He presented the Granville Plan to the National Agricultural Convention held at Washington and had it referred to a suitable committee of which Senator Stephen A. Douglas was a member. This was in 1852. During the next few years a number of attempts were made to introduce a bill in Congress embodying the Granville Plan and though these attempts failed with disheartening regularity there was no thought of giving up the fight. Before the campaign of 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was nominated for the presidency, Professor Turner talking with Mr. Lincoln at Decatur, told him he would be nominated

for the presidency at the coming convention and afterwards elected. "If I am," replied Lincoln, "I will sign your bill for State Universities." A little later Senator Douglas met Professor Turner and assured him, "If I am elected I will sign your bill."

Douglas had no occasion to leave the Senate for the White House but in 1861 he wrote Professor Turner for his Granville Plan and for the history of the whole movement declaring it to be "The most democratic scheme of education ever proposed to the mind of man. Professor Turner's letter in answer was elaborately written and sent to be mailed, but the wires were thrilled with the shocking intelligence of the death of the distinguished Senator. In grief and disappointment the letter was thrown into the waste basket. But it is always darkest just before the dawn it is said. At any rate, Senator Morrill of Vermont introduced the bill the next year; it passed Congress, President Lincoln signed it, and now scattered over the nation are noble institutions of learning, great state universities, where hundreds of thousands of young men and women have received valuable training and inspiration, and where millions of others in future years will be the beneficiaries of a great plan for popular education first proposed at Granville.