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ARMOUR INSTITUTE |
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By Walter Hendricks |
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| One of the greatest public orators of
his time, Dr. Gunsaulus was always inviting his friends to speak from the
mission platform. What an opportunity the students enjoyed! Himself a
liberal, Dr. Gunsaulus knew no barrier of color, or class, or creed, not
of economic or political point of view. Excerpts from those speeches would
make interesting reading. In the years to come he would have Booker T. Washington, who, with Lincoln-like simplicity called upon the students to lend their co-operation in solving the Negro problem. "The problem does not concern the black man alone. As we rise, you rise. As we fall, you fall. You can’t harm us without harming yourself, and the deeper you reach down to lift up another, the stronger you will be for it." Later, President Eliot of Harvard [was an invited speaker], and at the twentieth centennial, William Howard Taft, President of the United States of America. The year 1901 was a most important one. Dr. Gunsaulus had resigned the presidency during the previous summer because of ill health; and the school was in the hands of an acting president, Professor V. C. Alderson. Philip D. Armour, likewise, had been ill, suffering from heart trouble; and on January 6, at the age of 68, he passed away. The amount of investment he had made in the Mission and the Institute was said to be nearly three million dollars. Three months later, Mrs. Philip D. Armour and her son, J. Ogden Armour added another million dollars to that investment, and urged Dr. Gunsaulus to resume his presidency, after an absence of eight months, and to assist in planning an even larger school. Upon meeting trustee and former president Gunsaulus on the street and casually informing him of the million dollar gift; J. Ogden Armour said to him, "I just wanted to tell that I consider the west to offer a great field for work in engineering and technology and that I want Armour Institute to be one of the leading schools of technology in the world." Dr. Gunsaulus went even further in his reply. "This gift," he said, "will allow the school to branch out and take its place as the greatest technological school in the world." The Chicago Tribune, commenting on the plan for an enlarged school, said, "with such an institution supplementing the two universities, the museums, academies, and libraries of Chicago, the educational opportunities afforded by this city would be very nearly complete." |
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| Page last updated on May 17, 2000. |
