Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/282

 244 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO from time to time occur, and so keep the Board at all times up to the highest point of skill and efficiency You will understand that I have tried to give accurately Mr. Rockefeller's views, as he expressed them a day or two ago, without any admixture of my own. Upon the basis of the views here set forth Mr. Rockefeller's relations with the University of Chicago were maintained from the beginning to the end. His advice was sometimes asked, but it was rarely given. It has been said before that he never suggested the appointment of an instructor. It may here be added that he never interfered, in the slightest degree, with questions of instruc- tion, or so much as knew anything about the retention or dismissal of instructors. There was indeed one question on which the views of Mr. Rockefeller were well known from the beginning. On that question his advice was available whenever wanted. It was that the University should gauge its expenditures by its assured income; that it should never launch out into new expenses until it had secured beforehand, from himself or from someone else, assurances that would provide for the obligations incurred. Beyond this he would not go. On other questions the Trustees acted, so far as Mr. Rockefeller was concerned, perforce, on their own judgment. Mr. Gates concluded his letter by saying: "Mr. Rockefeller's judgment is, on the whole, against a formal public opening." The Trustees finally coincided with this view, and as unpretentious an opening as possible was decided on. In speaking of those days President Judson writes: We were anxious to have the opening day so planned in advance that everything would move as if the University had been in session ten years. That actually is what occurred. At half-past eight the bells sounded, the professors were in their classrooms, notices of the classes had been posted on the bulletin boards, the classes were in their places, and the exercises pro- ceeded smoothly throughout the morning. The recitation building, Cobb Hall, was not fully completed, and students passed under scaffolding to enter the classrooms. Workmen still lingered in the building on finishing jobs. There was some noise, but the work of the various classes proceeded as if all that were a matter of course. There was one exercise of a somewhat public nature, and that was the first chapel assembly. The chapel was a room occupying the northern portion of the first floor of Cobb Hall. It seated several hundred. In this room,