FOUNDER OF ROTARY

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 113, 6 February 1935, Page 10

FOUNDER OF ROTARY

Mr. Paul Harris’s Career

Mr. Paul P. Harris, of Chicago, (he founder of Rotary, who, as announced in "The Dominion” yesterday, will be visiting New Zealand in a few weeks’ time, will be accompanied by Mrs. Harris. Mr. Harris was born on April 19, 1868. at Racine, Wisconsin. He was educated in the public schools and academics'in Vermont, the University of Vermont and Princeton University. He took his law-course at the University .of lowa, graduated in 1891 ami was admitted to the practice of law in lowa the same year. He received his Illinois license as an attorney and counsellor at Law in. 1896 and since then he has been engaged continuously in the practice of his profession in Chicago. On July 2, 1910, he married Miss Jean Thomson, a native of Edinburgh. Scotland. After completing his law course in 1891, be spent the following five years in seeing tlie world and learning to know his fellows by actual contact with them under all sorts of conditions. He worked as a reporter on daily papers in San Francisco and Denver, rode the range in the cow country, picked oranges in Southern Louisiana, sold marble and granite, crossed the Atlantic twice on cattle ships, and made a third trip to Europe on business.

In 1890 he felt he had gained sufficient practical knowledge to be of service to his clients and opened a law office in Chicago. He bad neither friends nor relatives there. He had much time for reflection and pondered much on conditions of life and business in a large city. In 1905, as a result of his study and reflections. Mr. Harris had formulated a definite philosophy of business relations. Calling together three of hi.s friends, each of whom was engaged in a different line of business, he expounded his theory' to them. This group was the nucleus of the Rotary Club of Chicago. Through the propaganda of Paul Harris, this novel organisation soon had counterparts in other cities in the United States. After a few years the necessity for some organisation to bind these different clubs together became apparent. Thereupon Messrs. Paul Harris, Che.sley R.'Perry and.others organised the National Association of Rotary Clubs in America in 1910. Later through the extension of the movement into Canada and Great Britain, the International Association of Rotary Clubs was formed. This later was renamed Rotary international. Mr. Harris was third president of the Rotary Club of Chicago. the first president of the National Association and the first president of the International Association of Rotary Clubs, and is president-emeritus of Rotary International. '