Jackson. The investigation highlighted the inhumane "Cell Block," which led to the prison's reform. In 1912, he invited a number of business and professional leaders to get together to discuss problems in Detroit. This group became the "Thursday Noon Group," which devoted special attention to the "social needs of the rising population, especially in the areas of city planning, sanitary housing, playgrounds for children, industrial education, child labor, and workmen's compensation laws." McGregor chaired the meetings when he was in town. In 1914, the Thursday Noon Group was responsible for encouraging Michigan legislators to create the Michigan Farm Colony for Epileptics at Caro, Michigan (now the Caro Center, a state-operated psychiatric hospital). In 1913, McGregor was chosen to reorganize the Associated Charities of Detroit; in December 1917, the Detroit Community Union was formed and he was elected as chair of the new organization. He was also part of a financial federation that formed the Detroit Patriotic Fund to coordinate the fundraising campaigns for the war effort during World War I. In 1913, after her husband Thomas W. Palmer's death, Lizzie Pitts Merrill Palmer set aside $3 million to establish the Merrill-Palmer Motherhood and Home Training School. The school was founded after her death in 1916. McGregor was named to the board of trustees for the Palmer Estate in 1918, and was elected president in 1919. He served as president of the renamed Merrill-Palmer Institute until his death in 1936. McGregor led a campaign to provide better training and care for "higher-grade feeble-minded children." His efforts were rewarded when voters approved a bond to create the Wayne County Training School in Northville, Michigan. The school opened in 1925 and McGregor was appointed its first president. He served on the administrative board of control for 11 years. The school was closed in 1974. The McGregor Plan McGregor was an avid book collector and a great supporter of higher education. When he died in 1936, his personal collection of about 12,500 volumes was donated to the University of Virginia, after an exhaustive search for the appropriate repository. The McGregor Fund also donated $25,000 to the university to create the Tracy W. McGregor Library of American History to house his collection. In 1932, McGregor developed the "McGregor Plan for the Encouragement of Book Collecting by American College Libraries," which was designed to help smaller colleges and universities outside of New England or away from