16. Philanthropy led to the founding of several of America’s great universities
In 1873 one of America’s earliest successful entrepreneurs and a leading investor in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad left a bequest in his will which led to the founding of Johns Hopkins University, named in his honor. It was one of many such acts of philanthropy from wealthy Americans which created schools during the Gilded Age. Washington Duke, a tobacco magnate, liberally endowed the university which bears his name with the proviso that the school “open its doors to women, placing them on an equal footing with men”. Leland Stanford made his fortune in railroads and politics and despite being considered among the most notorious of the robber barons, endowed what is now Stanford University, where the first student admitted was a man by the name of Herbert Hoover.
William Marsh Rice was a Texas politician and businessman who left a large part of his considerable fortune to endow Rice University, which opened a dozen years after his death under mysterious circumstances, later determined to be murder. Ezra Cornell, the founder of Western Union, which in turn became the foundation of his fortune, provided the bulk of the funds for the creation of Cornell University at the beginning of the Gilded Age. The Gilded Age was a time of considerable philanthropy, with much of it accomplished in a conspicuous manner, as those who had achieved great wealth created lasting memorials to themselves, though the memorials have certainly benefited all who followed.