Jonathan B. Turner and the
Illinois Industrial University

Ryan Berkshire
Brookwood Junior High School, Glenwood

Today the University of Illinois has three campuses and a student population of fifty thousand annually. In its first year, 1868, the school was called the Illinois Industrial University and had a student enrollment of fifty and a faculty consisting of three teachers. Its establishment was due largely to the efforts of Jonathan B. Turner.

At the time of the Civil War, there were many colleges in the United States, but they offered classes in literature, mathematics, and languages. No schools offered classes in farming, mechanics, or crafts. During that time, agriculture and mechanics became important to the country's growth, and a new concept in education took shape. Because of the great importance of those trades, the need for colleges to teach those subjects grew. Many Americans were concerned that there were no institutions that offered classes in those areas of interest.

As a result the states considered forming such colleges. There were very few states, however, that wanted to spend the money needed to organize the schools. Reformers like Jonathan B. Turner of Illinois recommended that the government help raise the money for those colleges.

Turner believed that a practical education of the type needed for farming could best be satisfied through an entirely new type of institution, a state-supported industrial university. The Prairie farmer, the most respected of the farm periodicals, helped promote the idea with the legislature.

The application of science to agriculture made slow progress in Illinois. Nothing new was accepted without proof or observation of results. Farmers remained skeptical of free advice from experts. Farm journals were filled with advice based on questionable information gathered from many parts of the world.

On November 18, 1851, Turner spoke at a convention in Granville, Illinois, and voiced his belief in the need for a school in Illinois for education in agriculture and mechanics. A few months later, he asked the federal government to issue sections of land to each state that could be traded to people for money to pay for the new industrial universities. Turner became the prime spokesman in favor of land-grant universities. Turner also wanted the university to have a teacher training department. He knew that building better schools meant having more qualified teachers. In November 1852 an industrial university convention gathered in Chicago. Later, Turner's plan was put before the legislature. In January 1857 Governor William Bissell expressed his approval of the formation of an industrial university. Representative Justin S. Morrill of Vermont introduced a land-grant bill to provide an industrial university for every state in the union. The bill passed the Senate and the House of Representatives but was vetoed by President Buchanan on February 26, 1859. Three years later the bill passed both houses again, and on July 2, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed Morrill's bill. It gave each state thirty thousand acres of land for each senator and representative in Congress. They could be sold to get funds for the new universities. Illinois sold for $613,026 the 480,000 acres of land it had been allotted. The Illinois Industrial University, chartered by the legislature in 1867, was opened at Urbana. The Homestead Law was passed in 1862, and the United States Department of Agriculture was

Jonathan Baldwin Turner campaigned hard to bring agricultural education to the Midwest. He lobbied the federal government to establish land-grant universities, and his efforts paid off when President Lincoln signed the Land Grant College Act in 1862.

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The university's growth in Urbana was slow during its first twenty years. The field of higher education previously had been largely the domain of private colleges, and the $25,000-a-year endowment income for the university was inadequate for it to compete on the same level.

The name of the university was changed in 1885 to the University of Illinois. Before 1890 the University of Illinois College of Agriculture was not considered a success; its funds were insufficient and its students were not respected by farmers. Professors were often ridiculed for their ignorance. During the 1890s changes for the better were undertaken.

Jonathan B. Turner worked many years among farmers, educators, and politicians explaining and promoting his belief in industrial and agricultural education. He had contributed significantly to the betterment of Illinois agriculture.—[From Roger D. Bridges and Rodney O. Davis, Illinois: Its History and Legacy; Arthur Charles Cole, The Era of the Civil War, 1848-1870; Robert P. Howard, Illinois: A History of the Prairie State; Theodore Calvin Pease, The Story of Illinois; Robert M. Sutton, The Heartland.]

ILLINOIS HISTORY / DECEMBER 1992

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