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Page 13 text:
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THE STORY OF OCCIDENTAL THEY WERE PROSPEROUS, RECKLESS, UNCERTAIN DAYS. Los Angeles, twenty years emerged from the chrysalis of a pueblo town, was surging through the greatest land boom and consequent chaos Southern California was ever to know. Prolific Los Angeles County mothered sixty mushroom cities, mostly hypothetical, offering to prospective eastern buvers some eighty thousand separate pieces of real estate. Three railroads were fighting for the supremacy of service to this ballyhooed Eldorado with a California Southern time table of 1 886 advertising rates of three dollars to Kansas City and seven dollars to Chicago, and the Southern Pacific meeting this with Kansas City, two dollars. Within that scene, however, were men with purpose far sterner than the gamble of their times. In one of these men, J. G. Bell, and in the failure of another collegiate institution. Sierra Madre College, Occidental found the impetus that was the seed of its origin. Devoted to his church, and foreseeing the failure of the Sierra Madre institution, }. G. Bell presented to Rev. William Stewart Young, minister of the Bovle Heights Presbyterian Church, the idea of establishing a liberal arts college under Presbyterian direction in Southern California. This was in the autumn of 1885. That the wheels of circumstance began almost immediately to move is to be gathered from a perusal of the minute books of the Board of Presbyterian Ministers of this city. In the winter of 1885 and 1886 the following ministers, viz.: Rev. John M. Bool, Rev. Wm. J. Chichester, Rev. Wm. C. Steven, Rev. Ira M. Condit, and Rev. W. S. Young and the Sessions of the Presbyterian churches then in the city, met and conferred as to the need of an institution for higher education under Presbyterian control. The result of the meetings which were held was embodied in the following resolution passed at the meeting in the First Presbyterian Church of Los Angeles on February 15, 1886. Moved, seconded and carried that it is the sense of this meeting that steps should be taken at once, looking towards the establishment of a Presbyterian institution of learning in the cit ' . Occidental College, un-named, unrealized, was nevertheless in the womb! Almost a year
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Page 14 text:
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passed. Little happened in actual progress, but to two more important minds, those of Pro- fessor John M. Coyner and Samuel D. Weller, D.D., the college became a molten incentive. And in January, 1887, eleven months later, a committee of the Presbyterian Union w as appointed to draft articles of incorporation for the proposed college. These were completed on February twenty-fifth and certified by the Secretary of State at Sacramento on April 20, 1887. Today this date is celebrated as Founders Day. From the minutes of that momentous board meeting which convened on February twenty-fifth, this exciting bit may be gleaned: Mr. E. S. Field suggested the name The University of the Occident — which was lost. Mr. W. C. Stevens the name The Occidental University of Los Angeles which was carried. On a motion of W. S. Young the last vote was reconsidered and the name The College of the Pacific suggested— which was lost. Then on motion of W. J. Chichester, the name of ITie Occidental University of Los Angeles, California was again proposed and carried. In regard to the quotation, it is of interest to note that while University was first used as a part of the official title for Occidental, this was changed upon the request of the trustees and through the action of the Los Angeles Supreme Court to College on July 2, 1892. For, Occidental never has been, nor probably ever will be, a university. September 20, 1887, a corner stone was laid to what the Los Angeles Times called one of the architectural beauties of the county, the original Occidental building, located in Boyle Heights. This single structure was to serve as hall of letters, administration building, women ' s dormitory, president ' s office, library, refectory, and chapel until it burned down on January 13, 1896. Hard task-master was this college in its infancy to first president, Samuel D. Weller, who saw his dreams for the growth and advancement almost tumble with times contemporary as Southern California rushed headlong from boom days into deep mire of depression. Yet it was in his four years of service that much of the stable foundations were laid upon which the college was to grow and eventually prosper. In 1888, the McPherron Academy was absorbed as a part of Occidental College. And it was this move of creating a preparatory school that was to help succor the college through its leanest years and give to the school some of its grandest alumni. Quite different was Occidental in the years of its genesis from its present composition and generation. Its terms were three, fall, winter, and spring. Monday instead of Saturday was the holiday so that the students would not be forced to travel from their homes on Sunday. Tuition for the year amounted to fifty dollars, and all expenses for the boarding collegiate came to three hundred dollars. And according to an early catalogue, there are no 10
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