Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/324

 284 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO the secretary, Mr. Goodspeed, were summoned to New York for a conference with Mr. Rockefeller's representative, Mr. Gates. Two long interviews were held, and everything that was said was taken down by a stenographer. The substance of the interviews was perhaps contained in the following statement of Mr. Gates: What suggestions can we make, if any, which shall serve to encourage Mr. Rockefeller in the belief that the institution has come to the limit of deficit ? Apropos to the last question, I only need to say that the situation is such today that if Mr. Rockefeller were to designate, for endowment exclusively, the whole of the two millions additional pledged by him, less amounts now other- wise designated, and if the whole of the supplemental two millions, not now raised, were to be raised in cash and were to be designated also for endowment exclusively, and the whole of the three or three and one-half millions or there- abouts, so raised, were to bear five per cent interest, even that vast sum would not fill this gap. It is a natural, and, indeed, inevitable question with Mr. Rockefeller where this matter will end. The representatives of the University defended and justified the policy that had been pursued. Mr. Goodspeed made an exhaustive statement in the course of which he said: We have been laying the foundations of a very great enterprise. It was greater than we ourselves apprehended. The largeness of the plan upon which it was conceived involved the expenditure, year by year, of more money than any one of us, from Dr. Harper down, believed possible. This difficulty was inherent in the beginnings of the undertaking The view of Dr. Harper, who had in his mind an ideal of a university, prevailed. The result has been that we have an institution which, in five years, has taken a position beside the great universities of the country which have existed from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty years. Owing largely to the liberality of Mr. Rockefeller, the University, in this short time, has accumulated large funds These great contributions, combined with Dr. Harper's enlight- ened views of what a university ought to be, have made the wonderful success that has given the University a position of eminence equal to that of our greatest institutions. It was these views of Dr. Harper, carried out in the vast buildings and in the plans of the institution, that awakened the interest in Chicago which in the past five years has added quite three million dollars to the funds of the institution from the people of Chicago alone The University has made such an appeal to the intelligence and imagination of the people that we do not merely believe we know that great sums are coming to it from the people of that city.