Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/359

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HE organization and establishment of universities, colleges and institutes of learning in the middle west during the half century just past, has been a striking feature in the growth of that section of the country. The act of congress of 1861 to assist state universities by the grant of lands opened the way for the foundation of a number of colleges and universities under state control which have since become great institutions covering all branches of learning, notably the universities of Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin and Missouri. How well these excellent institutions of higher education have covered the field and supplied the demand for higher learning is shown by the fact that but two important non-sectarian universities, not under state control, have developed in this part of the country, namely, the University of Chicago and Washington University of St. Louis.

Numerous small colleges are to be found throughout all the states, usually under denominational control, and in many instances but little more than high schools, these nevertheless have supplied a certain demand which could not be filled otherwise and have occupied a not unimportant part in the educational system of the country; but the natural location both of Chicago and St. Louis, with a large and populous territory tributary to each of them, demanded university education of the highest type. And the advantages that a great city affords to the student in the many libraries, artistic and scientific museums, hospitals and dispensaries, law courts, manufacturing plants and machinery of all kinds, are such as can not be found outside of a large town.

In 1853 Mr. Wayman Crow, then a member of the Missouri state senate, secured the passage of an act of incorporation, approved February 22, 1853, by which a charter was granted to an educational institution to be known as the Eliot Seminary.

This charter, one of the broadest and most liberal upon which any institution is founded, is a perpetual one, and all property belonging to the university is exempt from taxation, city, county and state; and no limitations of any sort are imposed, except those which forbid any sectarian or partisan teaching. So desirous were the founders to avoid any accusation whatever of political or religious bias, that at their first meeting, this eighth article of the constitution was adopted;