Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/330

 290 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO see whether the conference agreement of December, 1903, was being faithfully observed whether the Trustees were conducting the institution within its income and thus inviting "the confidence of men of means both in Chicago and in the East." There was disappointment, but perhaps this disappointment had its part in encouraging the Trustees to establish that absolute control of the annual expenditures which characterized the financial manage- ment of the University from that day forward. When in December, 1905, the committee carried the budget for the next year to New York and with it presented the endowment needs its members found themselves in a new atmosphere. In January they were able to report that Mr. Rockefeller not only promised the funds needed to provide for the prospective deficit, but one million, one hundred thousand dollars for endowment. And during the same year, on December 26, 1906, he emphasized his confidence by contributing three million twenty-five thousand dollars, of which two million, seven hundred thousand dollars was to be added to the permanent endowment. The day of deficits ended. The last deficit was provided for in 1908. In March, 1907, Mr. Rockefeller turned over to the Uni- versity lands south of the Midway Plaisance for which he had paid one million, five hundred and eighty-two thousand dollars, giving the University the entire frontage on both sides of the Plaisance from Washington Park on the west to Dorchester Avenue on the east, a distance of more than three-quarters of a mile. On December 30, 1907, a new contribution for endowment was made amounting to one million, four hundred thousand dollars, and a year later in January, 1909, an epoch-marking communica- tion was sent through Mr. Ryerson to the Trustees by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., which said: To provide for the estimated net deficit of the University of Chicago for the year 1909-1910 and for permanent increase of endowment my father will give to the University as of July i, 1909, income-bearing securities the present net income of which is, in round figures, forty thousand dollars a year. This fund stands on the University books as "Rockefeller Endow- ment M $862,125." But, of course, there was no deficit. Mr.