Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/95

CHAPTER III THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVEMENT The raising of four hundred thousand dollars in one year in Chicago in 1889-90 was known by those most interested to be a difficult undertaking. The discouragements were many and great. The denomination to which the appeal must first of all be made numbered among its members no men of any considerable wealth. Those able and willing to give had been solicited for contributions to the Baptist Union Theological Seminary year after year for more than twenty years. Appeals for the Old University had been continuous and urgent throughout the thirty years of its history. The unhappy differences that attended much of that history had so alienated sympathies, destroyed confidence, and discouraged giving for education, that it was fully realized how difficult it would be to regain sympathy, reawaken confidence, and reopen the sealed-up fountain of benevolence in favor of a University with the old name and under the same denominational auspices. Moreover, as will appear later, unusual and extraordinary demands were being made on the financial resources of the citizens for many causes and espe- cially in providing for the enormous demands of the World's Fair. Nevertheless the attempt had to be made. And there were some encouragements. There was profound and widespread in- terest. The Old University, in addition to the important service it had rendered to thousands of students, had created throughout the Baptist world, at least, the conviction that Chicago was the foreordained seat of a great institution of learning and the inex- tinguishable purpose to have such an institution in that city. When, therefore, the American Baptist Education Society resolved to undertake at once its founding, and Mr. Rockefeller made his great offer, the purpose and the proffer were hailed with acclaim throughout that world. As soon as they could get together after the Anniversaries in Boston, the Baptist Ministers' Conference and the Baptist Social Union of the city issued a call for a meeting of representatives from 69