Chapters In My Life

The University of Chicago opened in the fall of 1892, one year after my removal to New York. Dr. Harper’s plans for the University were magnificent, indeed almost limitless in scope, and ever expanding. They involved, however, some valuable reforms in higher education. Our charter, drawn by ourselves, had provided for limitless expansion, but I need not say that it did not of itself finance limitless expansion. It was no objection to Dr. Harper’s scheme of university organization that when, if ever, it could be put into full operation, funds would be required for campus, buildings, apparatus, and endowment, far in excess of those of any other American university of the time. To this, though dimly and partially foreseen, Mr. Rockefeller did not object. The plans evoked approval in education circles, and gave Dr. Harper just occasion for pride. They were boldly but well conceived, and with some changes have worked well. Several features have been extensively copied. We knew indeed that Baptists could not afford a university, and for themselves had little immediate need of one. But soon we saw that a university on Dr. Harper’s plan might have a usefulness to other denominations quite as great as to Baptists. The whole Northwest, irrespective of creed, was looking to the new institution for educational leadership. If we were broad and hospitable, the field of the University would become limitless in possibility. And then, too, in Chicago itself there soon sprang up an interest among men of wealth and in the organs of public sentiment that filled us with satisfaction and hope. Gifts began to pour in from wholly unexpected quarters, buildings to be offered, prospective students by the hundreds to make inquiries. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that Dr. Harper found it impossible to keep within the extremely modest limit of the meager funds of the University. Nor could his restless spirit wait during long and slow years to see his plan in complete operation.

In fact, immediately after he became President, Dr. Harper began the organization of the University on a scale of expenditure that would require several more millions from Mr. Rockefeller at once, if debt and deficit were to be avoided. Perhaps Dr. Harper, in his financial inexperience, did not realize this at the time. Perhaps in manning departments he did not foresee the full cost of buildings and equipment, heat, light, and upkeep, books and illustrative apparatus. He had been a teacher, not an administrator. Perhaps in any case he preferred not to estimate in advance too accurately, but to leave much financing for the future. It must be admitted that his resistance was small and his temptations great.

But Mr. Rockefeller’s keen and experienced eye saw the drift with apprehension. Moreover, he was receiving, as he told me, private warnings of Dr. Harper’s financial commitments from friends in Chicago. He saw himself being forced to do in Dr. Harper’s time and way what he had proposed to do only in his own time and way. Within less than nine months after Dr. Harper became President, Mr. Rockefeller took me into his confidence. He said that he was filled with anxiety lest Chicago should “lie down” on him. Contracts were being made involving vast permanent expenditures for which there had been made no provision whatever. Was it expected that he would furnish the needed funds? He wished me to labor with Dr. Harper to try to restrain him, and to make him face the financial facts, and the debts and deficits sure to come.

Yet at the very same time Mr. Rockefeller consented to the choice of a few of the best experts in the country as heads of departments at the then unheard-of salary of Seven Thousand Dollars per year, for they could not be secured for less, and he confided to me as a secret not to be disclosed that he would pay any necessary deficit up to Forty Thousand Dollars for the first year. It was clear thus early that in Mr. Rockefeller’s mind pride in the institution and interest in its vast promise were struggling with his very natural purpose to be the master of his philanthropy and not its servant.

Dr. Harper had entered on his active duties as President in October, 1891. By the next February it was evident that the Seventy-five Thousand Dollars that would be available for the expenses of the first year would be insufficient. The Trustees limited the expenses for professors’ salaries to One Hundred Thousand Dollars, and themselves subscribed the extra Twenty-five Thousand Dollars on the spot. But this did not cover other necessary expenses which in every institution must amount to more than the sum of all the salaries. A Hundred Thousand annually in salaries means in every college an annual outgo of more than Two Hundred Thousand. Moreover, there was at Chicago everything to buy new—apparatus, libraries, illustrative material. I went to Chicago late in January, 1892, to look into the situation, and wrote back at once that I was “utterly appalled” at the inadequacy of the provision now in sight to take care of the work thrust upon the institution the first year; that it was certain to open in the fall with one thousand to two thousand students, for whose instruction no adequate preparation could be made on present funds. I spent many days in Chicago preparing my report. It called immediately for Two Millions of additional endowment to bring in a Hundred Thousand additional income per year. This extra income would be needed the first year. Mr. Rockefeller consented to give One Million of this for endowment, together with Fifty Thousand Dollars additional for current expenses the first year. He said in his letter of gift that it was a “thank offering to Almighty God for restored health.” I have good reason to think this gratuitous statement, publicly made, partook, to use a late word, of camouflage. It concealed from the public and perhaps partly from himself the unwelcome fact that the gift had been forced by the unexpected embarrassments of the University. That he felt so was evident by his warning to me at the time that he would not again give under any compulsion or plea of necessity—a statement which I transmitted to Dr. Goodspeed in a letter of May second, 1892. Yet it must be admitted that the compulsion lay in the situation and need rather than in Dr. Harper.

Drs. Harper and Goodspeed, with the Trustees, raised a million for buildings in Chicago during May, June, and July of 1892, and the time was ripe and circumstances favorable for Mr. Rockefeller to add the second of the Two Millions that my report had called for earlier in the year. So I presented the matter to Mr. Rockefeller on my own initiative, in September and again in October, and the Million was duly sent to the University in coupon bonds as a Christmas gift. But the gift made provision only for what was already permanently involved in the university budget, and Mr. Rockefeller not only cut off and retained the coupons of the first six months, but required Dr. Harper to sign a written guarantee that now more than Twenty Thousand Dollars should be added for professors’ salaries. These restrictions were wholly for moral effect on the Trustees. Mr. Rockefeller wanted the University to grow. He was willing to give, but he wished his gifts to be voluntary, and publicly perceived to be voluntary, not forced from him and publicly seen to be forced from him by the financial extremities of the University, and by a policy of expansion without funds for the cost. But to avoid deficits was to Dr. Harper utterly impossible. He was an ardent optimist. Invariably and against his own experience, he both overestimated resources and underestimated expenditures. In organizing a new department he did not pause to acquaint himself with the necessary expenses, with fullness, accuracy, and detail. His professors were constantly demanding and forcing upon him vast financial claims, and were often able to plead his own previous promises and committals. In urging and accepting new buildings, he made no provision for their running expenses and the upkeep which required endowment nearly equal to the cost of the building.

1 urged both the gifts of 1892 with all the earnestness I possessed. Dr. Goodspeed’s history narrates with substantial accuracy the story of them. But no story yet written adequately portrays the deep anxiety of the year, as we saw the University expanding its financial commitments far beyond any promise or reasonable hope of payment, even with these Two Millions; and I was extremely fearful that Mr. Rockefeller would become impatient and even estranged. But Mr. Rockefeller handled the situation with great wisdom. He suppressed whatever disappointment he had, gave freely even though under compulsion, and acted throughout in the public interest with great self-restraint. And surely no one now regrets Dr. Harper’s resistless energy and his careless finance, not even, I presume, Mr. Rockefeller himself. The fact was that the University had disclosed a greater field, a wider promise, and required far greater and more immediate expenditures than anyone had dreamed, in order to fulfill a destiny now manifest to all.

Next Section:

Mr. Rockefeller and Dr. Harper