Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/35

This page needs to be proofread.
INTRODUCTION
11

tion should be located within the city and not without it in a suburb. The site should be not less than ten acres. The president and two-thirds of the trustees were to be Baptists. Both sexes were to be afforded equal opportunities.

It became the immediate duty of the secretary to undertake the raising of the supplemental $400,000, and to see that the terms and conditions agreed upon were fully carried out. I went at once to Chicago, associated with myself in the canvass, Dr. T. W. Goodspeed without whose invaluable aid and assistance there is no reason to believe success could have been achieved. The year's canvass proved successful. A suitable site, meeting all the conditions, was secured. The Board of Trustees was selected. A charter was drawn. The institution was incorporated. The property, including site and pledges, was formally turned over to the board of trustees, and the University of Chicago, with something more than a million dollars of property, came into being. The American Baptist Education Society then withdrew, its work being complete and all the terms on which it had entered upon the undertaking having been fully carried out. No one at that time, unless it be Mr. Rockefeller himself, was gifted with prophetic dreams of what the infant institution was so soon to become.

Mount Clair, N.J.
1916