Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/513

 THE DEVELOPING UNIVERSITY 447 one of the days covered by Mr. Rockefeller's first visit to the Uni- versity in 1896, the first day of July was the most appropriate day to be observed as Founder's Day. Accordingly, on July 14, 1896, the Trustees formally appointed July i to "be celebrated as Founder's Day." The change in the time of beginning the Summer Quarter, in 1901, and the consequent change of the Spring Convo- cation to the middle of June, interfered somewhat with this cele- bration. But every year the Founder's Flag was expected to float above the quadrangles on Founder's Day, and remind the Univer- sity of what it owed to Mr. Rockefeller. It should be said that after the July i Convocation had been made a June Convocation, President Harper suggested to the Trustees (in his Decennial Report) that perhaps the date of observing Founder's Day should be changed, but up to the end of the first quarter-century the choice of the day remained unchanged. The second year of instruction had hardly begun before, among both students and professors, the desire to be of service to the com- munity began to seek expression. It quickly found this in the establishment of the University Settlement in the Stock Yards dis- trict, several miles distant from the University. Here was a great aggregation of laborers, with multitudes of children growing up, for whom things needing to be done could be attempted. The Christian Union, through its Philanthropic Committee, made the Settlement its great outside interest. A meeting was held by the Christian Union on one of the Sunday evenings in December, 1893, for the purpose of raising funds, at which addresses were made by Professor Laughlin and Miss Jane Addams. Five rooms were rented January i, 1894, and the work began. There were five residents from the University the first year, and ten other workers, students and pro- fessors. Miss Mary E. McDowell was one of the residents the first year, 1894; became the very efficient Head Resident, and was still guiding the work of the Settlement at the close of the University's first quarter-century. Miss McDowell's name appeared regularly in the list of the Staff of Administration and Instruction and in 1903 she was made a special instructor in Sociology. Soon after the beginning of the work a Settlement Board was organized, property was secured, and a building finally erected. In 1916 this property,