Denison University - Adytum Yearbook (Granville, OH)

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Denisorfs First Ivlillion dh I N INSTITUTION with a million is already on the road to more millions,With a prospect ot easier work in their acquisition. The achievement of the , is century-end in raising more than a quarter of a WX millionfor our Granville Schools is made more inter- 5? n esting and significant by a study of the conditions mover gi MQ under which through seventy years of history the pi mms sw sim! I i i, result has been attained, and under which Denison now exists. It is a far cry from that first subscription list of seventy years ago when the largest subscriptions to the projected institution were three of five dollars each, and each of these live dollar subscriptions made by two generous souls clubbing together for the amount, down to this latest movement headed by a single subscription of SIO0,000 and including nearly a score ranging from S5000 to S25,000, yet the small sums contributed in that slender beginning meant much at the time, and were seed- gifts containing potentially all of the million that has followed. I-Iovv far a small sum would go in those days may be understood from examination of an early prospectus of the college published in the Baptist Triennial Register for I836, when the institution was less than five years old. The college year was divided into two terms of twenty-one weeks each, with vacations from com- mencement, second W'ednesday in August, six weeks, and from the third 'Wednesday in February, tour weelcsf, The expenses for the term of twenty-one weeks were for Board, Washing, room, furniture and fuel, . . S27.OO.H The institution at that time had a farm and shops, in accordance with the manual labor fad prevalent at that day among educational institutions, and students were expected to use four hours a day in manual labor both as a means of helping them to pay their very modest bills and for its disciplinary effect. A 17

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note added to the prospectus states that: f'By a vote of the Board of Trustees any person will have the right to name the institution by paying the sum of SI0,000, or a professor-ship by paying S5,ooof' But even this bargain-counter opportu- nity to win lasting fame was not taken up until after twenty years. These sums were not insignificant, however, for with the expense of living so slight as is indicated by the prospectus, and with investments readily yielding I2 per cent. interest, the sums mentioned were the equivalent of four or five times the same amount today, when living expenses are more than twice as great, and interest rates scarcely half as high. This is further shown from the fact that the present beautiful campus site, as first purchased in 1855, including thirty acres, cost but SI,Q38.I6. Yet Denisonis million today seems a small endowment compared with the millions needed for a moderate equipment of certain institutions. But it needs only to be noted that a large part of the additional expense of these institutions is caused by their city location. The University of Chicago, for example, can invest a million dollars to secure its campus and then have one inferior to that of Denison. Buildings and other material equipments in a city are also likely, from one cause or another, to be more expensive than with us, and current expenses far greater. Then in the modern American attempt to do University work, although the term has almost no fixed significance, it involves usually the offering of a great variety of courses, professional, technological and otherwise, and gathers students of all grades of preparation and varying aims. This requires not only a multiplication of instructors but an increase of equipment in build- ings, libraries, laboratories, shops, hospitals and the like, such that the income from a million dollars at present rates of interest goes but a short distance with such an institution, whereas it may make generous provision for one which restricts its aim chiefly to the courses ot strictly collegiate work. For long years Denison struggled on, after the manner of most schools, with little or no endowment. Tuition fees and gifts tor immediate use were its dependence in those days. The year 1863 marks the first movement of import- ance for the raising of a respectable endowment and the sum attempted and attained at that time was SIO0,000. It is not improbable that his sum, raised during the days of civil war, although in timzes of depreciated currency, was the most difhcult of achievement of any of the undertakings of the University. 18