Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/367

FURTHER EXPANSION 323 ships, endowing each with twenty thousand dollars. Both came out of the interest awakened by the great religious gatherings of the World's Fair of 1893. On May 5, 1894, Mrs. Haskell wrote to President Harper as follows: I have been informed that Professor G. S. Goodspeed and others associ- ated with the University of Chicago have expressed the earnest hope that the friends of the University, recognizing the great interest aroused by the Parlia- ment of Religions, would endow a lectureship on the Relations of Christianity to the Other Faiths of the World. I take pleasure in now offering to the Trustees of the University of Chicago the sum of twenty thousand dollars, to establish and perpetuate a lectureship of Comparative Religion by which at least six lectures shall be delivered annually, before the students, teachers, and friends of the University. This lectureship bore the name of the donor. On October 12 of the same year, 1894, Mrs. Haskell established the second lectureship with a similar endowment of twenty thousand dollars. In her letter of gift she said: These lectures, six or more in number, are to be given in Calcutta, India, and, if deemed best, in Bombay, Madras, or some other of the chief cities of Hindustan, where large numbers of educated Hindus are familiar with the English language. Mrs. Haskell desired to establish a course of lectures, in which, in a friendly, temperate, conciliatory way .... the great ques- tions of the truths of Christianity, its harmonies with the truths of other reli- gions, its rightful claims, and the best methods of setting them forth, should be presented to the scholarly and thoughtful people of India It is my request that this lectureship shall bear the name of John Henry Barrows. The Barrows Lectures were delivered once in three years by distinguished men and were regarded as highly useful. In 1915 Mr. and Mrs. Jesse L. Rosenberger provided the Nathaniel Colver Lectureship and Publication Fund. Mrs. Rosenberger being a granddaughter of Dr. Colver, who was one of the founders of the Divinity School, desired thus to honor his name. Along this same line was the organization in 1898 of the College of Commerce and Politics, later the School of Commerce and Administration. The College was organized in response to the growing demand for courses which should aid in fitting students for careers in the practical professions of the various branches of