1. White to Gilman, May 20, 1901 (Daniel C. Gilman Papers, Johns Hopkins University Library, Baltimore, Md., cited hereafter as Gilman Papers). White had been a student at Yale with Gilman, and after graduation the two friends had traveled in Europe together. White was the first president of Cornell University. In 1901 he was ambassador to Germany.Google Scholar

2. White to Gilman, June 21, 1901 (Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C., cited hereafter as Carnegie Institution).Google Scholar

3. Carnegie, Andrew The Empire of Business (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1902), pp. 98–99.Google Scholar

4. Carnegie to Roosevelt, November 28, 1901 (Andrew Carnegie Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; cited hereafter as Carnegie Papers).Google Scholar

5. Winkler, John K. Incredible Carnegie: The Life of Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) (New York: The Vanguard Press, 1931), p. 276.Google Scholar

6. Dictionary of American Biography, ed. Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, II (1929), 502.Google Scholar

7. Typed “Memorandum handed to Mr. Carnegie Nov. 22 [1901] at interview with him & Mr. D. C. Gilman” (John S. Billings Papers, New York Public Library, Carnegie Institution Cartons; cited hereafter as Billings Papers).Google Scholar

8. Gilman to White, November 19, 1901 (Carnegie Institution).Google Scholar

9. Gilman to White, November 23, [1901] (Carnegie Institution).Google Scholar

10. December 13, 1901, p. 7.Google Scholar

11. John Wesley Hoyt, Unpublished Manuscript Autobiography, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin, pp. 448–49. In his remarkable—even improbable—lifetime, Hoyt studied both law and medicine; served as college professor and as the first president of the University of Wyoming. He was a territorial governor (Wyoming), author, editor, agriculturalist, world traveler, and U.S. commissioner at world fairs in this country and abroad. Much of his time in Washington, D.C., from 1891 until his death in 1912 was devoted to promoting a national university.Google Scholar

12. Carnegie to White, April 26, 1901 (Carnegie Papers).Google Scholar

13. Gilman to White, December 20, 1901 (Carnegie Institution).Google Scholar

14. Gilman to White, December 29, 1901 (Carnegie Institution).Google Scholar

15. Copy of letter from Billings to Henry Higginson, January 15, 1905 (Billings Papers).Google Scholar

16. Barclay Wilson, Margaret (ed.), A Carnegie Anthology (New York: Printed by American Lithographic Company, 1915), p. 146.Google Scholar

17. Draft of a speech by Billings, May 14, 1904 (Billings Papers).Google Scholar

18. Whereas the final copy of the “Trust Deed” spoke of “instruction of an advanced character” for students, and the Articles of Incorporation gave as one of the Institution's aims “to conduct lectures,” struck from an early draft was provision for the employment of teachers in Washington.Google Scholar

19. Gildersleeve to Gilman, February 29, 1876, as quoted in Francesco Cordasco, Daniel Coit Gilman and the Protean Ph.D. (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1960), p. 75. On this topic see Hugh Hawkins, “Charles W. Eliot, Daniel C. Gilman and the Nurture of American Scholarship,” The New England Quarterly, XXIX (September 1966), 291–308.Google Scholar

20. Minutes of the Trustee Meeting, December 8, 1903, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C., p. 194. Cited hereafter as Trustee Minutes.Google Scholar

21. William Wilson to John B. Henderson, December 26, 1899, as quoted in Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1899–1900 (Washington, D.C. : U.S. Government Printing Office, 1901), p. xxi.Google Scholar

22. Professor George H. Daniels discusses the “pure-science” ideal in his article, “The Pure-Science Ideal and Democratic Culture,” Science, 156 (June 30, 1967), 1699–1705. Also see Laurence R. Veyzey, The Emergence of the American University (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 121–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. Remsen to Billings, January 14, 1902 (Billings Papers).Google Scholar

24. Copy of letter from Pritchett to Gilman, January 13, 1902 (Carnegie Institution).Google Scholar

25. Copy of letter from Peirce to the President of Carnegie Institution, April 12, 1902 (Billings Papers).Google Scholar

26. A photograph taken at the time reveals an imposing body of men—solid, substantial, and elderly (their average age was 64). Many embellished a naturally dignified demeanor with a sober beard or a flourishing mustache; some affected both. Ten had been trained in the law (Edward White later was named Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court), two were physicians; four had served as members of Congress; six had held appointment to high governmental office; several were prominent merchants or bankers. Seth Low was mayor of New York City, and at least three of the trustees—Henry Higginson, Darius Mills, and Charles Hutchinson—were patrons of the arts.Google Scholar

27. Untitled document, Carnegie Institution, p. 14. Although the trustees ordered Gilman's remarks printed there is no official verbatim record of what he said. Because he spoke extemporaneously, it may have been that Gilman preferred that only a brief summary of his speech be printed. The files of the Institution contain a copy of an untitled document that appears to be the stenographer's record of his speech.Google Scholar

28. Not all the original members of the executive committee were to be equally influential in determining institutional policy. Abram Hewitt was 80 years old and in poor health when he assumed the chairmanship of the board of trustees; within a year of the Institution's founding, he was dead. Elihu Root, U.S. Secretary of War (later Secretary of State), found it difficult to participate fully in the committee's deliberations; however, for one so busy he was surprisingly active. Carroll D. Wright, the U.S. Commissioner of Labor, was, after 1902, President of Clark College in Worcester, Massachusetts. Like Wright, the Philadelphia physician, novelist, and scientist S. Weir Mitchell saw to it that some of his own scholarly interests were included among the investigations undertaken by persons supported by institutional funds. Of the many able men Carnegie chose to supervise the affairs of his new enterprise none was more interesting than Mitchell. “He was probably,” it was said, “the most picturesque and many-sided physician of his time—and knew it.” Ernest Earnest, S. Weir Mitchell: Novelist and Physician (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950), p. 177.Google Scholar

29. Life and Confessions of a Psychologist (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1923), p. 251.Google Scholar

30. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Yearbook Number 12, 1913 (Washington, D.C.: Published by the Institution, 1914), p. 3.Google Scholar

31. Among those on the advisory committees were: Franz Boas of the American Museum of Natural History in anthropology; Herbert Putnam of the Library of Congress in bibliography; T. W. Richards of Harvard in chemistry; T. C. Chamberlin of Chicago in geology; J. Franklin Jameson of Chicago in history; Charles P. Steinmetz of the General Electric Company in engineering; Robert Woodward (who replaced Gilman as president in 1904) of Columbia and Albert A. Michelson of Chicago in physics; Henry F. Osborn of Columbia in both paleontology and psychology; Alexander Agassiz of the Natural History Museum of Cambridge in zoology, and George E. Hale, Director of Yerkes Observatory, in astronomy.Google Scholar

32. Cattell's list was the forerunner of the biographical directory published today under the title, American Men of Science. Google Scholar

33. Daniel Gilman's “Daily Journal for 1902,” April 11, 1902 (Gilman Papers).Google Scholar

34. Copy of letter from Walcott to Gilman, November 20, 1902 (Carnegie Institution).Google Scholar

35. Billings to Walcott, November 21, 1902 (Carnegie Institution).Google Scholar

36. The predominance of the natural sciences is indicated also in the list of disciplines represented by the first group of 25 research assistants, most of them graduates of leading American or foreign universities. Six were in zoology; three each in physics and psychology; two each in botany, chemistry, geology, physiology, and mathematics; one each in astronomy, economics, and history. From their ranks it was hoped the “exceptional men” would emerge; to this end, each of the young assistants was given a renewable contract paying up to $1,000 for the first year and placed under the supervision of a reputable investigator, whose responsibility it was to identify talent deserving of further support. In addition to the large projects under way there were many smaller efforts, most of them the work of one man. For an interesting discussion of the successful efforts to secure support from the Carnegie Institution for an observatory in California, see Helen Wright's Explorer of the Universe: A Biography of George Ellery Hale (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1966), pp. 159–96. Walcott is reported to have written Carnegie in 1904: “In George E. Hale you have an exceptional man….” (p. 173).Google Scholar

37. Minutes, Trustee December 8, 1903, p. 216.Google Scholar

38. Carnegie to Gilman, December 10, 1903 (Carnegie Institution).Google Scholar

39. Pritchett to Higginson, May 15, 1904 (Carnegie Institution). Pritchett, who was Gilman's choice to succeed him, exchanged several letters with Gilman in 1904 in which the writers discussed the future of the Carnegie Institution. Pritchett later became both the head of the Carnegie Endowment for the Advancement of Teaching and a trustee of the Carnegie Institution.Google Scholar

40. Minutes, Trustee May 18, 1904, pp. 292–93.Google Scholar

41. Gilman to Billings, June 15, 1904 (Billings Papers). A copy of this letter in the files of the Carnegie Institution bears a note in Gilman's hand: “I afterwards talked with Dr. B. but could not alter his position. N.B.”CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42. Long-hand draft from Billings to Gilman, June 16, 1904 (Billings Papers).Google Scholar

43. Copy of an unsigned draft entitled “To the Trustees of the Carnegie Institution of Washington,” November 10, 1904 (Carnegie Institution).Google Scholar

44. Higginson to Gilman, November 29, 1904 (Carnegie Institution).Google Scholar

45. Copy of letter from Gilman to Higginson, December 3, 1904 (Carnegie Institution).Google Scholar

46. Higginson to Gilman, December 5, 1904 (Carnegie Institution).Google Scholar

47. Small packet of papers with title page in Gilman's hand and with the initials “D.C.G.,” December 1904 (Carnegie Institution).Google Scholar

48. Minutes, Trustee December 13, 1904, p. 307. To whom Gilman referred is unknown.Google Scholar

49. Billings, John S. seems to have either misunderstood or disapproved of the spirit of the changes made by the trustees to his revised by-laws. In a letter to the new president of the Institution, Robert Woodward, Billings suggested that Woodward change the wording in a leaflet the president had prepared. Billings wanted Woodward's leaflet to read: “The affairs of the Institution are conducted by the Executive Committee, chosen by and from the Board of Trustees, acting through the president of the Institution, as chief executive officer.” Billings added, “I have spoken to Dr. Weir Mitchell on this subject and he agrees with me that this change is desirable.” May 3, 1905 (Carnegie Institution).Google Scholar

50. White to Gilman, January 24, 1905 (Carnegie Institution). That White should be so surprised at Gilman's plight is in itself surprising, and raises a question as to how well these two old friends understood one another. On July 21, 1904, Gilman had written to his friend of his troubles with the executive committee; he had said that he wished to be released from his duties because of “infelicities of administration.” He would not write out his annoyances, he said, but he knew that White would understand that “after a peaceful career, [he was not] eager for a contest.” These words from the reserved Gilman should have told White that there was more than “some little friction” behind the unhappiness of his friend. (Carnegie Institution.)Google Scholar

51. Gilman to White, January 28, 1905 (Carnegie Institution). Thirty years before, after three turbulent years in Berkeley, Gilman had resigned as president of the University of California. In his letter of resignation to the board of regents, he wrote: “For University fighting I have had no training; in University work I delight.” Gilman Papers, University of California (Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California), I, 11.Google Scholar

52. Cordasco, Daniel Coit Gilman, p. 122.Google Scholar

53. Hawkins, Hugh Pioneer: A History of the Johns Hopkins University, 1874–1889 (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1960), pp. 101–02.Google Scholar