As a program officer at Carnegie Corporation as well as a Hamilton alumnus, I have a special bond with our founder, Andrew Carnegie. And as both the corporation and the College approach landmarks in their history, I celebrate these extraordinary institutions with gratitude, appreciation and — most recently — a bit of research.
The story begins with Elihu Root, Hamilton Class of 1864 and longtime trustee who as secretary of war, secretary of state, U.S. senator and Nobel Peace Prize recipient is among Hamilton’s most distinguished alumni. As every Hamiltonian knows, Root was not only the proverbial “big man on campus” himself; his family’s legacy is woven deeply into the history of the College: the Root House, the Molly Root House, the Root Farmhouse, Root Hall, Root Residence Hall and, of course, the Root Glen.
When I arrived at Carnegie Corporation, the first time I entered the board room, the life-size bronze bust of Root atop a pedestal — flanking similar statuary representing Andrew Carnegie and Frederick Keppel, the corporation’s longest-serving president — was hard to miss.
Of course, I had to ask about the connection. I found out that Root was the man who encouraged the establishment of the corporation.
He was a trusted advisor to Carnegie, maintained a long friendship with him, and eventually became the second president of the corporation (1919-1920; Carnegie himself was the foundation’s first president).
Flash forward nine years from my joining the Carnegie Corporation: To mark the 200th anniversary of Hamilton College and the centennial of the corporation, which was founded in 1911, I have been doing some research in the Carnegie Corporation archives on the Carnegie/Root relationship. In the process, I came across a letter that made me laugh out loud. In 1902, the president of Hamilton College, Melancthon Woolsey Stryker, had asked Andrew Carnegie for a grant of $60,000 for a library and dormitory. Carnegie’s reply proved that he was no pushover and that the “Carnegie way” of due diligence and hard-nosed, strategic grantmaking was well-established from the beginning:
I think the sure way to injure Hamilton would be to give the sums you name in a lump. Hamilton would not be Hamilton if you spent that amount of money rapidly…. S[o]me day you will be able to fix your mind upon some great need, and you will find me disposed to give you $100,000 to supply it, but not a cent until I am thoroughly satisfied that the addition[s] which this would make will be utilized and are urgently needed.
Apparently Carnegie was satisfied quickly. A year later, he gave Hamilton $100,000 worth of U.S. Steel bonds for student scholarships and to build Carnegie Residence Hall. Carnegie was delighted to make the award, he wrote to Root, because it gave him “great pleasure in thinking of the happiness you will have in being able thus to aid the Alma Mater of the Root family. The tree is known by its fruits, and that must be a good tree.”
Six years after that, Carnegie gave Hamilton College an additional $200,000 (and a matching $50,000 grant came from John D. Rockefeller) through Root — who had recently been elected senator from New York — to establish the Elihu Root Peace Fund, devoted to faculty salaries and honoring Root for his “unique services” as secretary of state in the cause of international peace, as The New York Times reported. For his part, Root wrote to Carnegie and argued that the award should properly be called the Carnegie Peace Fund. But, Root acknowledged, “I have observed from time to time, that among other laudable Scotch characteristics you possess that of knowing your own mind.”
To this day, the Elihu Root Peace Fund bears its original name but continues to serve Carnegie’s intentions; Vivyan Adair is the Elihu Root Peace Fund Associate Professor of Women’s Studies.
Andrés Henríquez ’83 is a program officer in urban education with the Carnegie Corporation in New York City. In July he assumes the chair of Hamilton’s Multicultural Alumni Relations Committee (MARC). This essay is adapted from his “The Root of Strategic Grantmaking: ‘The Carnegie Way’ Connects the Past to the Present” and is used with permission of the Carnegie Reporter, where the original appeared in Fall 2010.
