University of Iowa - Hawkeye Yearbook (Iowa City, IA)

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PRESIDENT WALTER A. JESSUP 22

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Progress INTO a land of rolling prairies, broken here and there by murmuring forests ; into a long of scorch- ing flats, and cool lakes trickled bands of coura- geous pioneers. They hoped and worked. They dreamed and were disillusioned. They succeeded and they failed. In creaking, jolting ox-carts they brought great blocks of stone from a quarry to the present site of Old Capitol, over three-quarters of a century ago. The timbers were cut from white oak groves of the surrounding hills. A Catholic missionary, an Italian scholar, Samuel Charles Mazzuchelli, designed the building. If those white pillars could talk they might relate the history of the State. They saw foundations laid in hope torn out in despair. They saw laws enacted today repealed tomorrow. But the present is ever kind to the past, and time is the great gilder of hu- man faces and amplifier of human virtues. If, by some magic power we could transform ourselves into the past, would we not in the next moment pray to be re-transformed into our own selves, living in our own time, nor find it dull by comparison? Old Capitol is now the nucleus of our Univer- sity, as it was then the nucleus of the State. As ox- cart gave way to team, the team to automobile, so has the University progressed. As waves of grain were swept into yawning bins; as villages grew into towns, and towns into cities ; as church spires pi erced the dusk of evening where wig- wams once housed the red-man; Iowa and the Uni- versity of Iowa have progressed. 21

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The Spirit of the Pioneer LEARNING, united with honor and virtue, has been and is the ruling influ- ence in the world. No one saw this fundamental fact more clearly than the pioneers of Iowa to whose memory this volume is dedicated. One of the first pictures of Iowa shows a mother sitting in a log cabin, holding her baby in the bend of her right arm and a Webster spelling book in her left hand. By the firelight she reads simple words for the younger children to spell and longer words for the others. That mother was a seer as well as a teacher. She knew that her children must have education to make their lives a success and a satisfaction. She realized that education was the fundamental basis of the canons of citizenship expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the nation and the state. She saw that democracy which will endure, religion which will deepen with the passing of the years, character which will make life more beautiful from childhood to the grave, all must be builded upon knowledge. Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free was the principle of the pioneers. Therefore they dotted the prairies with schoolhouses, contem- poraneous with log cabins and the first frame houses. In the rugged northwest- ern corner of the state they built a church in one valley and a schoolhouse in another, calling the high hill between them Mount Hope. They were not satis- fied with the three R ' s. They had visions of greater needs, higher aspirations, richer service. In the forties they established an academy at Denmark, which then had but three log cabins. It grew into the college at Grinnell. In the fifties they established an academy at Burlington, a college at Pella, and others at Mount Vernon, Oskaloosa, Western College, Cedar Rapids, Hopginton, Fair- field. There was a cry for teachers, and for an institution which could adequqately prepare teachers. There was a sense of vast and virgin fields of knowledge beckoning to a golden future, as the prairie horizons of Iowa led the pioneers on and on to the river of the western sun. So the University of Iowa was found- ed. When Iowa saw the state ' s strong box drawn by twelve teams of oxen across the leagues of snow to the new center of government in the valley of the Raccoon, it saw also the beautiful old state capitol, on its hill overlooking the valley of the Iowa, dedicated as the educational center of the state and charged with the re- sponsibility of keeping Iowa in the forefront among the discoverers of new and greater truth. The University of Iowa has kept that faith. It has been and ever shall be true to those high ideals of the pioneers. It has pressed on toward new horizons of learning. It has emphasized character. Its faculties have sought to make an impress upon the lives of the boys and girls committed to their care and train- ing, to the end that its alumni shall be everywhere acknowledged as possessors of that beautiful blending of learning, honor and virtue which makes men and women truly great. But this is a year of great encouragement. Thanks to the wise leadership of far-seeing representatives of the people the University is going forward. Halls of healing are rising on the western heights to face the halls of learning on the east. Between and below them lies the campus on both sides of the historic river a campus destined to be among the most beautiful in America. Simplicity which is the beauty of true art is the dominant note. There is nothing ornate. But there is an atmosphere of growth, resolution, courage, hope. There is confidence that the pressing needs of the present will be met in the ' not distant future and that Iowa will continue to be true to the traditions and the visions of her honored pioneers. W. A. Jessup. 23