The endowment also has grown from the paltry sum of $1,500, furnished in 1853 by Daniel Coe, to the sum of $450,000, and the total amount of money invested in the plant known as Coe College must exceed $750,000, which is surely no mean aggregate.
In the course of our history, we have seen a feeble rivulet sink at least twice in the sands only to reappear with new volume and freshness further down the bed of the stream. And we see it now a river of such dimension that it cannot disappear again. We have seen the work of the heroic men who have nobly spent upon the college in the days when it sorely needed their help. Such men were not wanting in the days of emergency but were sent from God. They could not have known as we now can plainly see what they were doing. They wrought in faith what it is now given us to possess in sight. They sowed in weakness what we now reap in power. Surely the lesson is plain and impressive; surely the teaching of this historical sketch is to the purport that we with our larger resources should enrich the institution which they sustained and promoted in their poverty.
They could not see how much worth their while it was to give and labor for Cedar Rapids Collegiate Institute, for Parsons Seminary, for Coe Collegiate Institute, for the institution was then but a tender, feeble shoot, whose future development was an uncertainty. We now can plainly see that it is well worth our while to give and labor for Coe College, for it is now one of the most potent and promising of all the colleges in this Mississippi valley. And every intelligent mind who has any powers of observation and has any experience of college work, knows full well that as colleges grow and prosper they need more financial help. It would be the extreme of selfishness and folly to take the view that Coe College is now strong enough and rich enough to advance on its present assets to meet its future.
Its needs are greater than ever. But it presents itself not as a beggar or a suppliant, but as a splendid opportunity for investment. It presents itself as the finest possible place to locate something to be spent in buildings, equipment, and endowment whereby in the course of the years, and we may even say the centuries to come, this money can go on yielding the richest conceivable dividends in the preparation for life and leadership of those of our choicest young men and women who shall come hither from near and far to enjoy the privileges of a college education. And thus as we close, our history becomes really an appeal.
[CHAPTER XXV]
The Old Blair Building
The Kimball building in Cedar Rapids stands on the site of an old landmark—the Blair building. This building, with the land and railroad companies it housed from time to time, was the center of much history in the development of Iowa, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. It is difficult for us to realize now what an immense influence these companies in the early days had in the settling up of the central west. A debt of gratitude is due the men who risked their fortunes in this developing work that many of us now are too apt to forget. Had it not been for the railroads these early patriots projected into the unsettled portions of these states the development of the west would have been greatly retarded. Immigration would have been slow, for people are never eager to settle in farming communities where there is lack of transportation facilities to get the produce of the farms to market.
It is felt that a brief account of the influences that went out from this center is entirely appropriate here. In fact it is needed as a part of this history of Linn county. Greatly to our regret the gentleman responsible for the historical data given below wishes his name withheld, but through modesty only. What is here printed was furnished by one who knows whereof he speaks, for as Virgil once wrote, "of it he was a great part."