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Now, as the sheer magnitude of his wealth rendered his accustomed approach obsolete, he was frustrated that he couldn’t give money away quickly enough to keep pace with his mounting income. It took several years before he learned to donate money in the systematic, scientific fashion that befit the scale of his fortune. He needed to forge a new set of working principles for his charity, and it was in his creation of the University of Chicago that he came to define his future style as a philanthropist.
Names: University of Chicago
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Rockefeller’s involvement in the university started in a roundabout fashion through his friendship with the Reverend Augustus H. Strong, an eminent Baptist theologian and exponent of the social gospel. For seven years after the Civil War, Dr. Strong had served as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Cleveland, where he officiated at the funeral of Rockefeller’s second child, Alice, who died in infancy. In 1872, he headed east to assume the presidency of Rochester Theological Seminary, the citadel of Baptist orthodoxy. Awed by the erudite piety of this Yale graduate, Rockefeller supplemented his income, paid his vacation expenses, and, heeding his entreaties, gave $500,000 to his seminary over the years. A fine-looking man with a bushy mustache, Strong was grave, witty, and charming but tightly buttoned up and incapable of levity. An autocrat by nature, he didn’t become convinced by an idea so much as possessed by it to an extent that other people could find insufferable.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Alice Rockefeller · Augustus H. Strong · Yale University · Strong · Rochester Theological Seminary · Civil War · First Baptist Church of Cleveland
EPUB paragraph 11 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
Starting in the early 1880s, Dr. Strong began to pitch to Rockefeller a grandiose scheme for an elite Baptist university in New York City over which he would himself preside. Convinced that the Baptists were lagging in the denominational race, he feared that many young Baptists were going by default to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. His “university of the future,” as he dubbed it, would sit on Morningside Heights and cost Rockefeller a breathtaking $20 million. Since New York was becoming America’s foremost metropolis, Dr. Strong thought it a fitting home for this institution. Modeled after Johns Hopkins, it would accept only graduate students and research fellows, attracting the cream of Baptist undergraduates from around the country. Above all, the university would defend the faith against the encroaching forces of modernism, banning “infidel” teachers from the campus. This educational vision was Dr. Strong’s monomania throughout the 1880s—he contended that he had a “divine mission” to promote it—and he badgered Rockefeller about it at every turn. Strong knew how to couch his appeals in religious terminology and dress up self-interest as heaven-sent duty.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Augustus H. Strong · Princeton University · Yale University · Harvard University · New York City · New York · United States · Johns Hopkins · Strong · Morningside Heights · Baptist university
EPUB paragraph 12 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
Hypersensitive to pressure, Rockefeller tended to stiffen up whenever he felt pushed. He feared the elaborate nature of Strong’s project and grew deaf to his entreaties. Several times, he asked Strong to table the subject and finally imposed a moratorium on all further discussion of it. Rockefeller was always quick to spy the worldly ambition when men of the cloth falsely claimed to pursue godly objectives. Ordinarily, he would have made quick work of such a pushy supplicant, but he tolerated Strong out of respect for his scholarship as well as because of growing ties between their two families.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Strong
EPUB paragraph 13 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
Whenever Dr. Strong returned to Cleveland, his children were among the very few who frequented Forest Hill, and the Rockefeller children were especially fond of his brilliant eldest son, Charles. Tall and handsome, with curly black hair, Charles would sit in their favorite beech tree, reading ballads to them while perched on a bough. At first, Charles was attracted to Alta, then moved on to her older sister, Bessie. The striking compatibility of the Strong and Rockefeller children must have comforted John and Cettie, who worried that less-religious children might spoil their wholesome environment. For years, John Strong corresponded with Edith and might even have proposed to her, while Junior had a schoolboy crush on Mary Strong, ten years his senior. Later, he wrote affectionate, flirtatious letters to Kate Strong—addressing her as “My dear sister Kate”—even though she, too, was many years older.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller · Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong · Alta Rockefeller Prentice · Edith Rockefeller McCormick · Augustus H. Strong · Cleveland · Forest Hill · Pratt. Charles, Sr. · John Strong · Kate Strong · Mary Strong · Strong · Kate · John
EPUB paragraph 14 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
Bessie and Charles became so wildly smitten with each other that friends said they were almost foolishly in love. They might have been secretly engaged as early as 1885, when Bessie was nineteen and Charles twenty-three. Charles was a prodigious young philosopher, a perfect reasoning machine, who inhabited a cold world of abstractions. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 1885, where he was both a pupil and a friend of William James. As the two star philosophers among the Harvard undergraduates, Charles and George Santayana cofounded a philosophy club and were natural rivals for the Walker Travelling Fellowship, which paid for two years of study in Germany. Santayana was so daunted by Strong’s intellect that before the winner was announced, he prevailed upon Strong to split the prize. It was awarded to these two remarkable students with the understanding that they would divide the money.
Names: Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong · George Santayana · William James · Harvard University · Pratt. Charles, Sr. · Strong · Germany · Walker Travelling Fellowship
EPUB paragraph 15 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
In 1886, John and Cettie were searching for a suitable college for Bessie after she graduated from the Rye Female Seminary, and Dr. Strong accompanied them on a tour of Vassar, Smith, and Wellesley. That the Rockefellers finally opted for Vassar owed much to the fact that the strong-willed Dr. Strong chaired its board of trustees. Since Bessie had eye trouble and found it difficult to read, Dr. Strong made special arrangements that allowed her to skip the entrance exams and room with a friend who read aloud to her. When Kate Strong decided to share a suite of rooms with Bessie, it seemed to seal a sacred bond between the two families—surely what the Reverend Strong coveted. He accomplished another strategic objective when Rockefeller became a trustee of Vassar and erected buildings bearing the names Strong, Davison, and Rockefeller.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller · Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong · Augustus H. Strong · Vassar College · Rockefeller family · Kate Strong · Strong · Davison · Smith · Rye Female Seminary · Wellesley · John
EPUB paragraph 16 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
The only Rockefeller daughter to attend college, Bessie must have been smart and tenacious to overcome her eye troubles. Her few surviving letters evoke a lively, appealing young woman. She was perhaps the most eloquent Rockefeller child, very fond of music and charitable to the poor. As one friend said, “Bessie was a slender rosy-cheeked girl, vivacious, pretty and charming.” George Santayana, who met Bessie fresh from Vassar, fondly recalled her as “the image of vigorous health and good sense, nice-looking, frank, and with manlike college airs.” Santayana always suspected that Reverend Strong conspired to marry off his eldest son to Bessie to snare the Rockefeller millions for his beloved university project. He also believed that Rockefeller had welcomed this match of his favorite daughter to a “good-looking, high-principled young man” who would “never separate her from her father, either in place or residence or in sound Christian sentiments.” If those were the hidden hopes superimposed upon this youthful romance, both fathers were cruelly disappointed.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong · George Santayana · Vassar College · Strong
EPUB paragraph 17 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
During the interval between his graduation from Harvard and his two-year German sojourn with Santayana, Charles underwent a spiritual crisis that had profound repercussions for the Rockefeller family. For two months, he preached in Salem, Ohio, then entered the Rochester Theological Seminary, where he was to study for the Baptist ministry under his father’s vigilant supervision. For the first year, he faithfully attended prayer meetings and taught Sunday school, but his rational Harvard education now corroded the spiritual verities of his youth. Later on, Charles made the terrible confession that he had lost his faith while correcting proofs of one of his father’s theology books. A wholly cerebral man, fearless in exploring forbidden thoughts, Charles realized that he could no longer accept supernatural revelation. He went to his father and announced that he couldn’t stay at the seminary and would openly declare himself an agnostic.
Names: George Santayana · Harvard University · Rockefeller family · Pratt. Charles, Sr. · Ohio · Rochester Theological Seminary · Salem
EPUB paragraph 18 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
For Reverend Strong, it was a shattering moment—one that he later characterized as his life’s most agonizing ordeal. As a distinguished Baptist theologian, he had groomed Charles as his successor and boasted of his intellectual prowess, confident it would be put to the service of the faith. “He depreciates insight,” he said of Charles, struggling to comprehend his apostasy. “He is critical rather than constructive.” Once his son decided to leave the seminary, the unforgiving Dr. Strong even had him excommunicated, bidding the First Baptist Church of Rochester to withdraw the “hand of fellowship” from his son because he had “ceased to believe in the fundamentals of doctrine.” Only later did Dr. Strong realize that his own rigidly doctrinaire attitudes about religion had helped to drive Charles from the church.
Names: Augustus H. Strong · Pratt. Charles, Sr. · Rochester · Strong · First Baptist Church
EPUB paragraph 19 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
Charles’s confidential admission must have stunned his father on several levels. If this loss of faith upset his marriage to Bessie, it might also derail Dr. Strong’s scheme to have Rockefeller finance a Baptist superuniversity in New York; it might even jeopardize Rockefeller’s future gifts to the Rochester seminary. It is not clear when Charles confided his spiritual turmoil to Bessie, or when Rockefeller became aware that his daughter’s suitor was a radical freethinker. Santayana’s comment clearly suggests that during Bessie’s courtship with Charles, Rockefeller was ignorant of Charles’s heretical tendencies and derived comfort from his sound views. This leads one to wonder whether Augustus and Charles—the one for money and the other love—tacitly decided to draw a discreet veil across Charles’s loss of faith.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong · Augustus H. Strong · George Santayana · New York · Pratt. Charles, Sr. · Rochester · Augustus
EPUB paragraph 20 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
The family association emboldened Dr. Strong to renew his pleas for a university in New York. While Bessie was still a freshman at Vassar, Dr. Strong dared to reopen the taboo subject. In a January 1887 letter, he began by telling Rockefeller that he had abided by his promise not to broach the forbidden subject, but time constraints now forced him to break long silence. “It has haunted me day and night for years,” Strong said of his proposal, “but I have had to keep my mouth shut. Meantime, years are passing and we are hurrying on to meet God.” Competing plans were now afoot for a Baptist university in Chicago, and Dr. Strong panicked at the thought of others gaining ground on him.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong · Augustus H. Strong · Vassar College · New York · Chicago · Strong · Baptist university
EPUB paragraph 21 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
Rockefeller rebuffed this overture, then sweetened the pill by giving another $50,000 to the seminary. Since he admired Dr. Strong and didn’t wish to alienate him, he proposed that they travel through Europe that summer with Charles and Bessie. For Strong, this presented a miraculous chance to push his scheme in an intimate setting. “He accepted an invitation to tour Europe with Mr. Rockefeller for the reason chiefly, as he once told me, of using the opportunities daily association at leisure would give him of expounding his great theme and winning Mr. Rockefeller’s adherence,” said one theologian friendly with Strong. In their travels, Dr. Strong planned to acquaint Rockefeller with the great European universities to whet his interest in founding an American school.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong · Augustus H. Strong · Europe · Pratt. Charles, Sr. · Strong
EPUB paragraph 22 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
On the other side of the Atlantic, George Santayana was sharing the Walker Travelling Fellowship with Charles Strong in Germany and noted his friend’s moody behavior. In January 1887, Santayana wrote to William James that Charles was “very reticent about all personal matters, so that I know less about what has been troubling him than you probably do.” A month later, Santayana told James that he had “no idea what has been the matter with [Charles] this winter except that evidently he has not been at ease.” Charles kept his engagement to Bessie so secret that when he went to Paris that spring he didn’t tell Santayana that he was meeting the Rockefellers. Santayana caught up with the party in London, where they were enjoying the festivities of Queen Victoria’s jubilee. Though Santayana met and liked Bessie, he was repelled by Rockefeller, who seemed devious and avaricious as he meditated ways to expand Standard Oil sales to Spain.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong · Charles Strong · George Santayana · William James · Standard Oil · Rockefeller family · Paris · London · Pratt. Charles, Sr. · James · Germany · Atlantic · Queen Victoria · Walker Travelling Fellowship · Spain
EPUB paragraph 23 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
Encouraged by their travels together that summer, Dr. Strong increased the pressure on Rockefeller in the autumn. He completely misread Rockefeller’s psychology. Where Rockefeller preferred a modest approach, Dr. Strong was often overbearing, as if trying to bully him into endorsing the project. He committed an unforgivable sin by suggesting that Rockefeller could sanitize his reputation by funding the university. “You have the opportunity of turning the unfavorable judgments of the world at large into favorable judgments—and not only that—of going down to history as one of the world’s greatest benefactors.” This argument miscarried on several counts: Rockefeller resented any references to his infamy, felt no need to cleanse his reputation, and rebelled against any insinuation that his charity was selfishly motivated. Four days later, he decided to postpone consideration of Dr. Strong’s project.
EPUB paragraph 24 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
Meanwhile, Charles Strong’s suit to win Bessie’s hand prospered, and sixteen months later, on March 22, 1889, Bessie Rockefeller, twenty-three, adorned with $8,000 in pearls, married Charles, twenty-seven, in the front drawing room of 4 West Fifty-fourth Street in a marriage performed by Reverend Augustus H. Strong. With 125 guests, it was as opulent an occasion as the Rockefellers had ever staged, and Bessie’s favorite teachers and classmates were brought down from Vassar in a private railroad car. The morning after the wedding, Charles and Bessie sailed for Germany so he could resume his philosophical studies, which explains why Bessie didn’t finish her final year at Vassar. She was also suffering from psychological problems, the first sign of nervous symptoms that made her adult life a huge mystery to posterity. In his letters, Rockefeller urged her to avoid all unnecessary excitement and strain, old-fashioned advice that would prove increasingly inadequate in coping with her deep-rooted troubles.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong · Charles Strong · Augustus H. Strong · Vassar College · Rockefeller family · Pratt. Charles, Sr. · Germany · West Fifty-fourth Street
EPUB paragraph 25 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
Having piqued Rockefeller’s interest in endowing a major Baptist university, the Reverend Augustus H. Strong had to ward off competing plans backed by no less spirited advocates. The most promising alternative, for a university in Chicago, had the advantage of building on preexisting foundations. In 1856, Stephen A. Douglas had contributed ten acres of land to start a small University of Chicago under Baptist auspices. It expired exactly thirty years later, the victim of debt and mismanagement. Many of its alumni considered this a disgrace to the Baptists and tried, at the last minute, to salvage the institution. Quite naturally, they turned to Rockefeller, who had aided the Baptist Union Theological Seminary in suburban Morgan Park, a sister institution. The seminary’s secretary, Thomas W. Goodspeed, unfortunately broached his rescue plan to Rockefeller at an inopportune moment, when the latter was being hounded mercilessly by Dr. Strong; the proposal was consequently rejected. In spring 1887, on the eve of Rockefeller’s European trip, Goodspeed again sounded out Rockefeller, but the titan cordially sent back fruit and flowers, not cash. Nevertheless, Goodspeed had drawn Rockefeller’s attention to Chicago’s merits as a home to a great Baptist university.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Augustus H. Strong · Thomas W. Goodspeed · University of Chicago · Chicago · Stephen A. Douglas · Morgan Park · Baptist university · Baptist Union Theological Seminary
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Goodspeed was a much better lobbyist than Dr. Strong, with a finer instinct for Rockefeller’s sensibility. With snow-white beard and blue eyes, he was a dignified man who knew how to lobby a rich donor with exquisite tact as opposed to Dr. Strong’s blunderbuss approach. He saw that Rockefeller flinched at anything that smacked of coercion and that patience was better than high-pressure salesmanship. From the outset, Goodspeed made practical arguments, pointing out that construction costs were cheap in Chicago and that the Baptists lacked a first-rate midwestern college, forcing their children to study at eastern schools. Goodspeed was heartened by Rockefeller’s response when the most gifted member of the Morgan Park faculty, the thirty-year-old biblical scholar William Rainey Harper, was being wooed by Yale. Rockefeller knew Harper’s reputation as one of the foremost Baptist scholars of the Old Testament and urged Goodspeed to retain him at all costs. Though Harper was eventually spirited off to Yale, he stayed in close touch with Goodspeed and consistently supported a Chicago university project, though without committing himself to any role beyond a consulting one. As early as January 1887, he wrote to Rockefeller, “There is no greater work to be done on this continent than the work of establishing a University in or near Chicago.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · William Rainey Harper · Augustus H. Strong · Thomas W. Goodspeed · Yale University · Chicago · Morgan Park
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Rockefeller felt comfortable with worldly theologians, people determined to find an honored place in both this life and the next, and he was absolutely enthralled by Harper, the student of sacred literature who yearned to build an academic kingdom. Born in New Concord, Ohio, in 1856, Harper gave new meaning to the term wunderkind. He had entered college at ten, took a B.A. at fourteen, and completed his Ph.D. at eighteen. When this prodigy joined the Morgan Park faculty at twenty-two, he was younger than many of his seminary students. Many Baptist leaders recognized him as a man with a special future in the denomination, a dynamo bursting with energy and ideas. While still in his thirties, he opened Bible schools in five cities, founded a correspondence school, and coaxed seventy professors to join an American Institute of Hebrew that was assisted financially by Rockefeller.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · William Rainey Harper · Ohio · Morgan Park · New Concord · American Institute of Hebrew
EPUB paragraph 28 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
While teaching at Yale, Harper often traveled to Vassar on Sundays to teach a Bible class and stayed with the college president, Dr. James M. Taylor. Since Rockefeller often visited Bessie for the weekend, Taylor brought the two together for breakfast, and the mutual attraction was instantaneous. Rockefeller later paid tribute to Harper as “a man of exquisite personal charm” and admitted that he had “caught in some degree the contagion of his enthusiasm.… As a friend and companion, in daily intercourse, no one could be more delightful than he.” Rockefeller didn’t issue such glowing testimonials lightly.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong · William Rainey Harper · Yale University · Vassar College · James M. Taylor · Taylor
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Harper was a pudgy man with a soft, jowly face behind round, thick spectacles. He exuded optimism and captivated people with his visionary ardor. As one newspaper noted, “Dr. Harper is a marvel of energy. His face shows as much eagerness and aggressiveness as that of Luther.” Yet he had enough tact to steer clear of the pitfalls that tripped up the more egotistical Dr. Strong. In October 1887, fresh from his transatlantic voyage with Strong, Rockefeller invited Harper to lunch at 26 Broadway. The meeting went swimmingly, and a week later the impossibly busy and resolutely private Rockefeller cleared his schedule and spent an entire day with Harper—lunching with him at noon, then driving for a few hours in Central Park, then chatting again in the evening. For Rockefeller, this was an eternity of conversation. Equally unprecedented, he gave Harper a standing invitation to speak with him at any time. As he plumbed the plans for Baptist universities in different cities, Rockefeller always regarded Harper as an emissary for the Chicago group. After his heady day in Manhattan, Harper wrote excitedly to Goodspeed, “Again and again [Rockefeller] referred to you and to his thorough appreciation of your excellence and worth.” On future visits to Vassar, Rockefeller and Harper were often seen cycling around the campus together.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · William Rainey Harper · Augustus H. Strong · Thomas W. Goodspeed · Vassar College · Chicago · 26 Broadway · Manhattan · Martin Luther · Strong · Central Park
EPUB paragraph 30 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
With all the hostile publicity directed against Standard Oil during the debate over the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, it was certainly an auspicious time for Rockefeller to consider a major philanthropic bequest. The newspapers were now puffing him as one of America’s richest men, possibly the richest man, so he was under a certain pressure to show that he could discharge this large responsibility. Education was a safe, neutral area in which he had twenty years of experience, having contributed generously to Denison University in Granville, Ohio; Indian University in Muskogee, Oklahoma; Barnard College in New York, which appointed Cettie to its first board of trustees; and Cornell University, whose president, Andrew D. White, he had met on a European trip. Most notably, he was the godfather of Spelman Seminary in Atlanta. Yet Rockefeller was, in many ways, an improbable university founder, for he was not bookish, never attended college, and operated more in a world of facts than theories. Having skipped college, he never automatically recommended it to young people, telling one minister, “I should say in general the advantage of education is to better fit a man for life’s work. I would advise young men to take a college course, as a rule, but think some are just as well off with a thorough business training.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller · Standard Oil · Spelman Seminary · Cornell University · New York · Atlanta · United States · Andrew D. White · Ohio · Oklahoma · Interstate Commerce Act · Denison University · Indian University · Granville · Muskogee · Barnard College
EPUB paragraph 31 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
Yet precisely because Rockefeller had missed college, no school could stake a claim on him. While he had the option of distributing his educational largesse widely, such dispersed giving didn’t jibe with his philosophy. In religion and education no less than in business, Rockefeller thought it a mistake to prop up weak entities that might otherwise perish in the evolutionary race. “I think mistakes are made by organizing too many feeble institutions—rather consolidate and have good, strong working church organizations,” he wrote in 1886—a remark that could have applied to his educational views. In the long run, Rockefeller transposed to philanthropy the same principle of consolidation that had worked so well for him in business. Worn down by masses of people clamoring for his money, Rockefeller knew that he now needed a larger and more efficient method for disposing of his fortune. Without it, he would lapse into the slipshod amateurism that he detested. Dr. Strong and Dr. Harper had planted a vision of a large project in his mind, but it would require the careful tending of a lapsed Baptist minister named Frederick T. Gates to bring this seed to glorious life.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Frederick T. Gates · William Rainey Harper · Augustus H. Strong
EPUB paragraph 32 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
While Rockefeller was casting about for some means to spend money more liberally without compromising his scrupulous standards, a group of Baptist leaders met in Washington in May 1888 to form the American Baptist Education Society (ABES). The driving force behind this new association was Dr. Henry Morehouse, the executive officer of the American Baptist Home Mission Society who had advised Rockefeller on Spelman Seminary. Morehouse thought Baptist education was in a woeful state and urgently in need of reform. For Rockefeller, the new group was providential, promising to serve as a handy conduit for channeling large amounts of money to worthy, well-researched Baptist schools.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Spelman Seminary · Washington · Morehouse · American Baptist Home Mission Society · ABES · American Baptist Education Society · Henry Morehouse
EPUB paragraph 33 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
To serve as executive secretary of the new group, Morehouse drafted a fiery, articulate young Baptist minister, the thirty-five-year-old Frederick T. Gates, who had recently resigned a pastorate in Minnesota and now gravitated toward more worldly affairs. Soon after he assumed the post, Gates championed a Baptist university in Chicago to fill a glaring void. The eastern churches held more money, but the fastest-growing part of the membership resided in the Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes region. Before writing his report, he conducted an intensive study of Baptist education with prosecutorial zeal and ministerial fervor and he confirmed many of the arguments that Thomas W. Goodspeed had adduced. Because many Baptists schools were located in rural backwaters, midwestern congregants often attended schools of other denominations. Having tripled in size in two decades and ranking as America’s second largest metropolis with 1.7 million residents, Chicago seemed the optimal site for a major college.
Names: Frederick T. Gates · Thomas W. Goodspeed · Chicago · United States · Minnesota · Morehouse · Great Lakes · Baptist university · Mississippi Valley
EPUB paragraph 34 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
Gates presented his findings in a richly detailed report that exhibited the exhaustive research that would endear him to Rockefeller. At the beginning, Gates, still unfamiliar with his patron, believed that Rockefeller would respond better to a bold plan than something tentative or equivocal. Hence, he portrayed this new Baptist university as the nucleus of a national educational network, confiding to Morehouse, “A scheme so vast, so continental, so orderly, so comprehensive, so detailed, will in my view capture a mind so constituted as Mr. Rockefeller’s is.” On October 15, 1888, he electrified a Baptist convention in Chicago with an impassioned paper entitled “The Need for a Baptist University in Chicago, as Illustrated by a Study of Baptist College Education in the West.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Frederick T. Gates · Chicago · Morehouse · West · Baptist university
EPUB paragraph 35 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
The Gates report has often been credited with convincing Rockefeller to opt for Chicago, yet William Rainey Harper provided timely assistance. Two weeks after Gates made his sensational address, Dr. Harper spent ten hours at Vassar with Rockefeller and then joined him on the train to New York. During this momentous day, Rockefeller first declared his intention to found a Baptist university in Chicago. As Harper informed Goodspeed, “[Rockefeller] himself made out a list of reasons why it would be better to go to Chicago than to remain in New York.” Rockefeller leaned toward the Midwest for several reasons. He feared the complications that might result from the bullheaded Dr. Strong’s leadership of any New York school. He also worried that an eastern school might be encrusted with tradition, whereas a Chicago school could “strike out upon lines in full sympathy with the spirit of the age.” Then there was a political dimension that Rockefeller never dared to articulate openly. He had to convince the public that he would not meddle or convert the school into a mouthpiece for his corporate interests. As he put it three decades later, Chicago “was sufficiently removed from Wall Street to encourage the hope that it would escape suspicion of being dominated by the so-called interests.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Frederick T. Gates · William Rainey Harper · Augustus H. Strong · Thomas W. Goodspeed · Vassar College · New York · Chicago · Midwest · Baptist university · Wall Street
EPUB paragraph 36 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
Twice during the next month, Rockefeller spent a day with Harper, first in Poughkeepsie, then in New Haven, for nonstop talks about the proposed university. Harper was astonished by his patron’s unreserved passion. “I have never known him to be so interested in anything,” Harper told Goodspeed, “and this promises much.” Growing more enthusiastic by the hour, Rockefeller advanced a three-pronged plan for a college and university in Chicago, a theological seminary in New York (doubtless to placate Dr. Strong), and an educational trust of western colleges. This last step, a brainchild of Harper, envisioned a string of colleges throughout the West sharing common management with the Chicago university. Warming to the project, Rockefeller planned to visit Cornell on an inspection tour and court three Baptist professors for Chicago. In eloquent testimony to his commitment, Rockefeller told Harper of his readiness to give three million of the first four million dollars needed by the Chicago school. On December 3, 1888, the ABES formally endorsed the plan to found a new school in Chicago; ABES would be the official channel for Rockefeller’s contributions.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · William Rainey Harper · Augustus H. Strong · Thomas W. Goodspeed · Cornell University · New York · Chicago · New Haven · West · ABES · Poughkeepsie
EPUB paragraph 37 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
Then suddenly, in early 1889, Rockefeller grew aloof toward William Rainey Harper, who had committed the classic error of promoting his cause too assertively. What especially distressed Rockefeller was that Harper wanted to start with a full-blown university, whereas he preferred to begin with a college and expand incrementally. To break this impasse, Harper tactfully bowed out and allowed Gates to take charge of the lobbying campaign. A master at reading the minds of potential donors, Gates intuited that Rockefeller felt put upon by Harper’s quixotic plans and, to lessen his anxieties, he sent Rockefeller a scaled-down plan for a plain Chicago college. Much relieved, Rockefeller invited Gates and Morehouse for lunch on January 21, 1889. When Gates first set eyes on the great sphinx, he found him polite and decorous, if cryptic. “In parting with me,” Gates reported to Harper, “he said that his mind worked slowly in these matters, but he was glad to have had this opportunity for extended conversation, and closed by saying, ‘I think we are in the way of progress.’ ”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Frederick T. Gates · William Rainey Harper · Chicago · Morehouse
EPUB paragraph 38 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
An important upshot of the lunch was that Rockefeller invited Gates to accompany him on a train trip to Cleveland. Gates saw that a low-key approach was the perfect antidote to Harper’s rousing oratory, and he decided to let Rockefeller initiate discussion about the Chicago school aboard the train. “I think this was soon perceived by Mr. Rockefeller,” Gates said in his memoirs, “that it surprised and pleased him, and that he amused himself by putting my sense of propriety to the test.” Though the train left New York at 6 P.M., the two men never referred to what was uppermost in their minds. When they were joined by a phalanx of Standard Oil men, Gates noted the magnetic power Rockefeller had over them. “I observed that he spoke very little indeed, and always in a low and quiet voice.” At one point, when the porter making up Rockefeller’s berth accidentally smacked him over the head, Rockefeller “uttered no word, made no exclamation, gave not one word of reproof to the careless porter, and reassured him when he offered profuse apologies,” recalled Gates.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Frederick T. Gates · William Rainey Harper · Standard Oil · Cleveland · New York · Chicago
EPUB paragraph 39 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
Having failed to broach the Chicago question with Rockefeller, Gates crept into his sleeping berth that night “a miserable, disappointed man.” As it turned out, Rockefeller was coyly enjoying a cat-and-mouse game, and as they neared Cleveland the next morning, he began to pummel Gates with questions about the ABES. Rockefeller wanted reassurance that the ABES board was truly disinterested and devoid of unstated agendas. He also wanted Gates to make on-site inspections of schools and not rely on secondhand reports. On the strength of these assurances, Rockefeller decided to make the Baptist society his preferred vehicle for denominational gifts, an important first step on the road to wholesale philanthropy. Clearly, Rockefeller was contemplating new ways of distributing money through central agencies that could offer expert advice and buffer him from applicants.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Frederick T. Gates · Cleveland · Chicago · ABES · ABES board
EPUB paragraph 40 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c17_r1.htm
Gates often marveled at the inexplicable ways of his new patron, who enjoyed keeping everyone in suspense. As the ABES board meeting approached on February 20, 1889, Gates awaited word of a large contribution from Rockefeller. Only as the meeting was called to order did a messenger arrive with a $100,000 pledge to the organization. Later on, when Rockefeller asked him what the society did with the money, Gates said it went into a bank account that paid no interest. This so mortified Rockefeller’s sense of thrift that he borrowed back the $100,000 and paid the society 6 percent. “I can’t endure to see that money idle,” Rockefeller told Gates. “I feel about it as one does to come into a room, ill swept, with the corners full of cobwebs and dust. I want to clean up that room.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Frederick T. Gates · ABES board
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