Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/380

 334 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO He had been preparing for it for several years. A committee of the Senate had considered the whole question. Conferences had been held with members of the bar and of the bench. President Harper had satisfied himself that a Law School would be self- supporting from the beginning, and that the only thing he needed to warrant its establishment was a library. On the recommenda- tion of the President, the Trustees, January 21, 1902, voted: 1. That Mr. Rockefeller be requested to consider the advisability of giving to the University the sum of fifty thousand dollars for the purchase of a law library: and if he shall consent, that 2. The President be authorized to proceed to organize the University School of Law, to be open for instruction October i, 1902. Mr. Rockefeller readily agreed that fifty thousand dollars of his two million-dollar gift of October 30, 1895, should be used for "the purchase of a Law Library and the organization of a Uni- versity School of Law." A high standard of admission was set, to quote President Harper, "three years in advance of those of any other school west of New York." President Harper was entirely right in assuring the Trustees that it would cost far less to establish and conduct the Law School than any other professional or graduate department. Given a building and a library, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars would per- manently endow the School. It was an essential part of a complete University, and the Law School of the University of Chicago added notably to the power and usefulness of the institution. The library was bought, the professors secured, and the School opened October i, 1902, just ten years after the opening of the University. As an accommodation to the new School, Professor Joseph Henry Beale came from the Harvard Law School to act temporarily as Dean and assist in the work of organization. Professor James Parker Hall, later Dean, and Professor Ernst Freund were mem- bers of the Law Faculty from the beginning, and remained at the end of the University's first quarter-century. The number of students the first year was seventy-eight. The attendance increased regularly, if not rapidly, during the succeeding thirteen years, reaching in 1915-16 about four hundred. The story of the Law Building is told in another place. It was occupied by the Law School in 1904. Professors Floyd R. Mechem