Knox-Lombard Merger

One blowy October day in 1858 a lanky, shambling, tangle-haired politician stood on the steps of a college building in Galesburg, Ill., and fervently shouted at a short, chesty orator, his opponent in debate: "He is blowing out the moral lights around us who contends that whoever wants slaves has a right to hold them!" The lanky one was Abraham Lincoln, the other Stephen Arthur Douglas.("The Little Giant"). The building was Old Main of Knox College. Knoxmen may well be proud of her past. For Knox's 93 years have been as packed full of worthy happenings and worthy people as any little college west of the Alleghenies. Announced last week were preliminary plans for a merger with Knox's oldtime rival, Lombard College, also in Galesburg, Ill.

Because there is no body of precedent for academic coalition, the trustees of the two institutions moved slowly and circumspectly. Contemplated upshot, however, is that Lombard (enrollment 270) will jointly occupy the buildings of Knox (enrollment 600) with Knox's ruddy, sharp-faced President Albert Britt--onetime (1901-06) editor of Public Opinion, long-time (1909-23) editor of Outing--as the chief executive of the two. schools. A $5,000,000 building program, begun by Knox in 1927, is expected to be sufficient to house the joint institution. Of the merger said President George Gilman Davis of Lombard: " Cooperation instead of division is the need in education, as elsewhere. By getting together we believe a better piece of work can be done. ..."

In her limited fashion, Knox has already done her work well. She is one of the six colleges to which Harvard sends exchange professors, "the only college in Illinois having an active chapter of Phi Beta Kappa." In traditions and famed alumni she rivals her huge contemporary to the southeast, the University of Illinois. The college was founded with the town in 1837 by a band of non-sectarian New York State zealots with an eye to spreading culture through the western territory recently opened up as land grants to veterans of the Revolutionary War and of the War of 1812.

In later years, Rev. Edward Beecher, brother of famed Preacher Henry Ward Beecher, conducted services in what is now the college chapel. On the steps of Old Main, Robert Todd Lincoln spoke publicly of his father for the first and last time (1896).

Although the school has never had a department of journalism, in that direction is it best represented by its alumni. Knox was the " Siwash" of George Hamlin Fitch. Famed among other writing Knox alumni are: Edgar Lee Masters (Spoon River Anthology), Don Marquis (The Old Soak), Eugene Field (newspaper colyumist, Poems of Childhood). Her two alumni presidents are journalists--President Britt and Dr. John Huston Finley (president 1892-99), now " editor emeritus" of the New York Times. Oldest living graduate (1859) is Ellen Browning Scripps, sister of Edward Wyllis Scripps and a prime mover in the early days of Scripps-Howard journalism. In the class of 1882 were Samuel Sidney McClure, founder of McClure Syndicate, and John Sanburn Phillips, director of Crowell Publishing Co. Other famed alumni, living and dead, include: Thomas W. Goodspeed (1859), a refounder of the University of Chicago; Nelson Dean Jay (1905), Morgan partner; Robert Rice (1896), vice president and general manager of Colorado & Southern Ry.; Thomas Harper Blodgett (1899), president of American Chicle Co.; Playwright Otto Abels Harbach (No! No! Nanette) was in the class of 1895. In addition Knox boasts three U. S. Ministers, one Ambassador, two Governors, one Governor of the Philippines.

Founded by Universalists 14 years after Knox, on the prairie near the outskirts of Galesburg, stands Lombard. So militantly bitter was football rivalry between Lombard and Knox that six years ago the perennial game was discontinued.

Lombard's famed alumni Include: Poet Carl Sandburg (1902), who holds a Litt. D. from both Lombard and Knox; Allen Francis Moore (1889), president of Moore Investment Co.

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