Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/186

 CHAPTER VI FIRST STEPS IN EXPANSION The University of Chicago, at its inception, was not a university but a college. Mr. Rockefeller's original subscription was made, not for a university, but for a college. It read, "I will contribute six hundred thousand dollars toward an endowment fund for a college to be established at Chicago." Every possible effort had been made by Dr. Harper and Mr. Good- speed to induce Mr. Rockefeller to give fifteen hundred thousand dollars toward a fund of two millions that the new institution might, from the outset, have the proportions, or at least the assured promise of a university. They had continued these efforts for months. It was impossible for Dr. Harper to abandon the hope that Mr. Rockefeller would make an initial contribution that would establish a true university. Mr. Goodspeed concluded that their demands were too large and, on his own responsibility, modified them, generously proposing to Mr. Rockefeller to let him off with an initial contribution of only a million dollars! When Mr. Gates, in January, 1889, became the leading negotiator with Mr. Rocke- feller he soon concluded that both these gentlemen had been making larger demands than would, at that time, be granted, and that the very utmost that could be hoped for was a sum sufficient to assure, with the contributions of others, the founding of a college of the first order. He, therefore, at the crucial interview in May, 1889, named to Mr. Rockefeller six hundred thousand dollars as the amount it would be necessary for him to give to accomplish this result. Mr. Rockefeller, although he evidently felt that the sum required from him was excessive, readily yielded and made the suggested proffer, not to found a great university, but a well- equipped college. In the same way, the American Baptist Education Society, when it finally entered upon its great campaign for the establish- ment of the institution, distinctly announced that it aimed at the 158