Based on the first thorough study
of the archival records, this essay reveals that the campaign established novel features
of university fundraising through contentious negotiations among conflicting groups, prompted the university administration to centralize and control alumni affairs and
development efforts for the first time, and, above all, introduced today's ubiquitous episodic
pattern of continuous fundraising, in which mass comprehensive campaigns alternate with discrete solicitations
of wealthy donors, whose
dominant roles have never changed.