Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/329

 THE UNIVERSITY AND ITS BENEFACTORS 289 conference have been working during these years has been a policy of reduc- tion of deficit. It is evident therefore that more radical steps toward the accomplishing of this end must be taken. It is the unanimous sense of this conference that until this deficit is wiped out by endowment or retrenchment, the University must rigidly decline to consider the enlargement of any departments now existing, or the addition of any new departments of work which do at the time, or may in the future involve the University in additional expense, unless ade- quate funds are especially provided therefor. This policy the gentlemen here assembled commit themselves to carry out to the full extent of their ability. In adopting this policy we are not taking a backward step, nor are we conceiving the University as remaining stationary. We conceive this step to be a step in advance, and the most important and the most exigent now before the University. If we shall demonstrate our ability to conduct the institution within its income and thus place it on an assured and permanent financial foundation, we shall have placed the institution in a position to invite the confidence of men of means, both in Chicago and in the East, and will be in a position to assure them, not only of the permanency of the institution, but that it can and will conduct its affairs annually without financial embarrass- ments and without financial crises, which may either threaten its usefulness or embarrass its friends. As Mr. Rockefeller had for the three years preceding this con- ference added a million dollars to the endowment as regularly as January came round, and as the needs were now greater and more urgent than ever, and as the responsible parties had now concluded an agreement, binding on them all, henceforth "to conduct the institution within its income," it might have been supposed that a new and perhaps unusually large endowment gift would now be made. But no contribution whatever for endowment was made. Mr. Rockefeller subscribed three hundred thousand dollars to make the income for 1904-5 adequate, and he also turned over to the University lands north of the Midway Plaisance which he had been quietly buying for a number of years, and which had cost him one million, six hundred and eighteen thousand dollars. December, 1904, came round and a committee again visited New York, with the budget for the year beginning July i, 1905. Again there was disappointment as to any gift for endowment, but Mr. Rockefeller cheerfully promised two hundred and forty-five thousand dollars for the current expenses. He was waiting to