Chapters 17-18 Summary and Analysis

Rockefeller is continually besieged with requests for money, many from people who want money for personal use. He eventually devises a method of philanthropy that is in keeping with his fortune. Reverend Augustus H. Strong wants Rockefeller to finance a Baptist university in New York, but John D. does not favor the idea, even after his daughter Bessie marries Strong's son, Charles in March 1889.

John D. is very impressed with William Rainey Harper, whom he meets while visiting Bessie at Vassar. He agrees to Harper's plan to establish a university in Chicago. Rockefeller is impressed with Andrew Carnegie's comment that a man who dies rich is disgraced. Marshall Field donates a ten acre plot to the University of Chicago. The Morgan Theological Seminary is transferred to the new university and Harper is its president. It opens on October 1, 1892.

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