Cracks in the Foundation: Frederick T. Gates, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the China Medical Board

Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Volumn 3, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 59-89

  Baick, John S ^a  

^a WESTERN NEW ENGLAND UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84875375580     PISSN: 15377814     EISSN: 19433557     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S1537781400000621     Document Type: Article

References (152)

1. Frederick T. Gates, ‘Tentative Suggestions as to World Strategy in Medicine (1924),” Frederick T. Gates Collection, Box 4, Folder 79, Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC).
2. The most overwhelming praise for the China Medical Board comes from Raymond B. Fosdick's history of the Rockefeller Foundation, in which he calls the CMB and its work “the best that Western civilization had to offer to a people whom it profoundly admired and in whose future it deeply believed. It was a gift inspired by no motive other than a desire to promote the welfare of men.” Raymond B. Fosdick, The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation (New York, 1952), 91.
3. The strongest critique of the China Medical Board comes from E. Richard Brown, who argues that Gates had “unabashed imperialist motivations” for supporting the introduction of Western medicine in China, which would help “convert and colonize the heathen” and thus pave the way for Western industrial capitalism. E. Richard Brown, Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and Capitalism in America (Berkeley, 1979), 122
4. “Rockefeller Medicine in China: Professionalism and Imperialism,” in Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad, ed., Robert Amove (Boston, 1980): 123–146.
5. Much of the scholarship on the China Medical Board also glosses over the complex story of its creation, instead focusing on its most heavily-funded and highest-profile venture, the Peking Union Medical College. John Z. Bowers, Western Medicine in a Chinese Palace: Peking Union Medical College, 1917–1951 (Philadelphia, 1972)
6. Mary Brown Bullock, An American Transplant: The Rockefeller Foundation and Peking Union Medical College (Berkeley, 1980)
7. Kaiyi Chen, “Quality Versus Quantity: The Rockefeller Foundation and Nurses' Training in China,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 5 (Spring 1996): 77–104
8. Mary E. Ferguson, China Medical Board and Peking Union Medical College: A Chronicle of Fruitful Collaboration, 1914–1951 (New York, 1970)
9. Qiusha Ma, “The Rockefeller Foundation and Modern Medical Education in China, 1915–1951” (Ph.D. diss., Case Western Reserve University, 1995).
10. Frederick T. Gates, “Thoughts on Medical Missions and the Spirit and Teaching of Jesus by a member of the Rockefeller Foundation”
11. CMB Actions, Rockefeller Foundation, Box 24, Series 601, RG 1, Folder 233 A, Appendix 3, RAC.
12. For a general discussion of the agenda of the Rockefeller Foundation and other American philanthropic foundations see Amove, Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism
13. Edward H. Berman, The Influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign Policy: The Ideology of Philanthropy (Albany, NY, 1983)
14. Marcus Cueto, ed., Missionaries of Science: The Rockefeller Foundation and Latin America (Bloomington, IN, 1994)
15. Soma Hewa, Colonialism, Tropical Disease, and Imperial Medicine: Rockefeller Philanthropy in Sri Lanka (Lanham, MD, 1995)
16. Frank Ninkovich, “The Rockefeller Foundation, China, and Cultural Change,” Journal of American History 70 (March 1984): 799–820.
17. Kenneth Prewitt, Social Sciences and Private Philanthropy: The Quest for Social Relevance, Essays on Philanthropy, Number 15: Series on Foundations and Their Role In American Life (Indianapolis, IN, 1995), 12.
18. Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, The Politics of Knowledge: The Carnegie Corporation, Philanthropy, and Public Policy (Middletown, CT, 1989)
19. Barry D. Karl and Stanley N. Katz, “Donors, Trustees, Staffs: An Historical View, 1890–1930,” The Art of Giving: Four Views on American Philanthropy: Proceedings of the Third Rockefeller Archive Center Conference (Tarrytown, NY, 1979): 3–13.
20. Frederick Taylor Gates, Chapters in My Life (New York, 1977), 2–33, 125.
21. Chapters in My Life 48.
22. Chapters in My Life 49.
23. Chapters in My Life 56–72.
24. Chapters in My Life 71–77.
25. Chapters in My Life 80, 83.
26. Chapters in My Life 179–180.
27. Chapters in My Life 83.
28. Chapters in My Life 88–92.
29. Chapters in My Life 85–96
30. Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (New York, 1998), 361–365.
31. Susan Curtis, A Consuming Faith: The Social Gospel and Modern American Culture (Baltimore, 1991)
32. Henry F. May, Protestant Churches and Industrial America (New York, 1963).
33. Gates, Chapters, 160.
34. Chernow, Titan, 263–264.
35. Gates, Chapters, 160–161.
36. Alfred Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA, 1977).
37. Howard S. Berliner, A System of Scientific Medicine: Philanthropic Foundations in the Flexner Era (New York, 1985), 28.
38. James E. Fell, Jr., “Rockefeller's Right-Hand Man: Frederick T. Gates and the Northwestern Mining Investments,” Business History Review 52 (Winter 1978): 537–561
39. Chernow, Titan, 364, 367–74.
40. Although he acknowledged that his autobiography was “not a medical treatise,” he frequently returned in it to his refrain of attacking the practice of medicine in America in his autobiography. Gates, Chapters, 26–27, 79–80.
41. Titan, 180.
42. Titan, 179–184
43. Chernow, Titan, 470–476.
44. Chernow, Titan, 404.
45. Gates, Chapters, 179–184
46. Chernow, Titan, 470–476
47. John Ensor Harr and Peter J. Johnson, The Rockefeller Century (New York, 1988), 66.
48. Gates, Chapters, 198–201.
49. indeed, Gates morosely called the term a “deathless phrase.” Gates, Chapters, 201–202
50. Harr and Johnson, Rockefeller Century, 84.
51. Gates, Chapters, 202–204.
52. For die most comprehensive discussion of America's interest in China in this period, see Michael H. Hunt, The Making of a Special Relationship: The United States and China to 1914 (New York, 1983)
53. Marilyn B. Young, The Rhetoric of Empire: American China Policy, 1895–1901 (Cambridge, MA, 1968).
54. Gates, Chapters, 63–64. Gates spends over ten pages of his autobiography - the longest single chapter - describing the lessons he learned from Rochester's Dr. Anderson. Most of these lessons are general matters of personal conduct and morality, but Gates spends almost a full page on China.
55. Ernest Burton, Harry Pratt Judson, Eri Hulbert, Alonzo Parker, and Albion Small to Frederick T. Gates, December 31, 1906, Rockefeller Family Archives, RG III, 2, O, Folder: Proposed Foreign Mission Fund, 1906–1909, RAC
56. Richard J. Storr, Harper's University: The Beginnings: A History of the University of Chicago (Chicago, 1966), 74, 366
57. Catherine Lewerth, Rockefeller Foundation History, vol. 3, pt. VII
58. “Creation of the China Medical Board (1914–1921),” (Unpublished, Rockefeller Foundation institutional history, 1949), 522.
59. William K. McKibben to Edward Burton, December 31, 1906, Rockefeller Family Archives, RG III, 2, O, Folder: Proposed Foreign Mission Fund, 1906–1909, RAC.
60. Gates, Chapters, 131.
61. Frederick T. Gates to Edward Burton, et al., January 7, 1907.
62. Rockefeller Family Archives, RG III, 2, O. Folder: Proposed Foreign Mission Fund, 1906–1909, RAC.
63. Gates to R.F. Fitch, March 6, 1907
64. Rockefeller Family Archives, RG III, 2, O, Folder: Proposed Foreign Mission Fund, 1906–1909, RAC. R.F. Fitch was head of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions in New York.
65. Rockefeller Family Archives, RG III, 2,O, Folder: Proposed Foreign Mission Fund, 1906–1909, RAC.
66. This meeting has also been called the China Centenary Conference. M. Searle Bates, “The Theology of American Missionaries in China, 1900–1950,” in The Missionary Enterprise in China and America, ed., John K. Fairbank (Cambridge, MA, 1974), 143.
67. Gates to Reverend Arthur H. Smith, 1907
68. Smith to Gates, June 8, 1907
69. Smith to Gates, July 29, 1907
70. Rockefeller Family Archives, RG III, 2, O. Folder: Proposed Foreign Mission Fund, 1906–1909, RAC.
71. Henry C. Mabie to Gates, January 30, 1908, Folder: Proposed Foreign Mission Fund, 1906–1909, RAC.
72. Gates arranged for $20,000 to be given to support the commission, with the provision that the source of the gift not be publicized. The subsequent President's report for the University of Chicago listed the gift as “from a friend for Oriental Investigation - $20,000.” Lewerth, Rockefeller Foundation History, 524–525
73. Bullock, An American Transplant, 33–34.
74. Gates, “The China Medical Board,” 1.
75. Frederick T. Gates Collection, Box 1, Folder 10.
76. Gates, “The China Medical Board,” 4.
77. Jonathan D. Spence, To Change China: Western Advisers in China, 1620–1960 (New York, 1980).
78. Jane Hunter, The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China (New Haven, 1984), 1–11
79. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “The Missionary Enterprise and Theories of Imperialism,” in Fairbank, The Missionary Enterprise in China and America, 336–373.
80. Sidney A. Forsythe, An American Missionary Community in China, 1895–1905 (Cambridge, MA, 1971), 18.
81. Gates, “The China Medical Board,” 3.
82. Lagemann, The Politics of Knowledge, 203
83. Steven C. Wheatley, The Politics of Philanthropy: Abraham Flexner and Medical Education (Madison, WI, 1988).
84. Arnove, Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism
85. Berman, The Influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign Policy
86. Brown, Rockefeller Medicine Men
87. Fosdick, The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation.
88. Karl and Katz, “Donors, Trustees, Staffs,” 7
89. Gates to Rockefeller, Jr., January 23, 1907, Folder: Proposed Foreign Mission Fund, 1906–1909, RAC
90. Chernow, Titan, 566.
91. indeed, by the late 1890s, Rockefeller, Sr. was largely absent from the day-to-day operations of his financial and charitable efforts, with Gates claiming a great share of these duties. Rockefeller, Jr. gradually assumed his share of this work. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. to John D. Rockefeller, Sr., December 31, 1906
92. Rockefeller Family Archives, RG III, 2, O. Folder: Proposed Foreign Mission Fund, 1906–1909, RAC.
93. Gates to “Mont,” June 4, 1909
94. Gates Collection, Box 2, Folder 31, RAC
95. Gates, “My Resignation,” Gates Collection, Box 4, Folder 78: Gates Papers 1916–1917, RAC.
96. Chernow, Titan, 567.
97. “China Conference of the Rockefeller Foundation,” Rockefeller Family Archives, RG 2, Series O, Box 11, Folder 88, RAC.
98. Peter Buck, American Science and Modern China, 1876–1936 (New York, 1980), 55–57
99. Fosdick, The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation, 24–25.
100. “China Conference of the Rockefeller Foundation.”
101. In his 1900 tract “The Evangelization of the World in This Generation,” Mott expressed concern with social causes, but emphasized that the salvation of souls was still “the chief business of the Church.” Donald K. Gorrell, The Age of Social Responsibility: The Social Gospel in the Progressive Era, 1900–1920 (Macon, GA, 1988), 84; “China Conference of the Rockefeller Foundation.”
102. The Age of Social Responsibility: The Social Gospel in the Progressive Era, 1900–1920
103. The Age of Social Responsibility: The Social Gospel in the Progressive Era, 1900–1920
104. Chernow, Titan, 362.
105. Gates, “The China Medical Board,” 4, 9.
106. Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920 (Cambridge, MA, 1978), 198.
107. Frederick T. Gates, “Gates on Rockefeller,” Gates Collection, Folder 57: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. 1892–1927
108. Chernow, Titan, 506–511
109. Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty (New York, 1976), 87–88.
110. Karl and Katz, “Donors, Trustees, Staffs,” 9.
111. Chernow, Titan, 511.
112. Gates, “The Gradual and Orderly Development of a Comprehensive and Efficient System of Medicine in China,” 1914, Gates Collection, Box 1, Folder 10, RAC.
113. Roger Greene to Jerome Greene, March 1, 1914, August 4, 1914
114. Warren I. Cohen, The Chinese Connection: Roger S. Greene, Thomas W. Lamont, George E. Sokolsky and American-East Asian Relations (New York, 1978).
115. Fosdick, The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation, 82–83
116. Bowers, Western Medicine in a Chinese Palace, 40.
117. Lewerth, Rockefeller Foundation History, 565
118. Harr and Johnson, The Rockefeller Century, 61,68
119. Noel Pugach, “Embarrassed Monarchist: Frank J. Goodnow and Constitutional Development in China, 1913–1915,” Pacific Historical Review 42 (November 1973): 499–517.
120. Gates, “The Gradual and Orderly Development.”
121. “The Gradual and Orderly Development.”
122. Gates, “Thoughts on Medical Missions and the Spirit and Teaching of Jesus by a member of the Rockefeller Foundation.”
123. “Thoughts on Medical Missions and the Spirit and Teaching of Jesus by a member of the Rockefeller Foundation.”
124. “Thoughts on Medical Missions and the Spirit and Teaching of Jesus by a member of the Rockefeller Foundation.”
125. “Thoughts on Medical Missions and the Spirit and Teaching of Jesus by a member of the Rockefeller Foundation.”
126. The friend was Francis Peabody, father of Francis Weld Peabody of the Judson Commission. Peabody had heard about the details of the meeting and wrote to Gates out of concern. Francis Peabody to Gates, December 15, 1914, Gates Collection, Box 1, Folder 14, RAC.
127. Minutes of the First Meeting of the China Medical Board - December 11, 1914
128. “Press Release of the Peking Union Medical College,” Rockefeller Foundation, Box 26, Series 601, RG 1, 601 A, Folder 239, RAC.
129. Gates, “The Gradual and Orderly Development.”
130. Besides never comprehending why he was chosen, he also noted ruefully that he was actually chosen director while on a trip through the Southern states for the General Education Board, “and when I got back to New York I found that I had a new job with a whole set of duties mapped out.” Lewerth, Rockefeller Foundation History, 522, 568, 573.
131. Gates, “The China Medical Board,” Frederick T. Gates Collection, Box 1, Folder 10, RAC
132. Fosdick, The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation, 83–85.
133. Chandler, The Visible Hand, 327.
134. Chernow, Titan, 568.
135. Gates, “Shanghai - A Review of Facts,” Gates Collection, Box 4, Folder 65, RAC.
136. Abraham Flexner helped provide Buttrick with a quick overview of medical education, but acknowledged that Buttock's importance lay in his “superb diplomacy” with missionary societies. Abraham Flexner, Abraham Flexner: An Autobiography (New York, 1960), 141–142.
137. Chernow, Titan, 569.
138. Gates, “Shanghai - A Review of Facts.”
139. Gates and Buttrick to Roger Greene, November 13,1916
140. Rockefeller Archives, RG 1, Series 601, Box 33, Folder 261, RAC.
141. Karl and Katz, “Donors, Trustees, Staffs,” 10.
142. Gates, “The China Medical Board,” Gates Collection, Box 1, Folder 10, RAC.
143. Gates, “Tentative Suggestions as to World Strategy in Medicine (1924),” Gates Collection, Box 4, Folder 79, RAC.
144. Gates, “The China Medical Board,” 11.
145. “The China Medical Board,” 4.
146. Bullock, An American Transplant, 35.
147. Besides, by this time John D. Rockefeller, Jr. had come under the guidance of Mackenzie King and Ivy Lee, who helped the Rockefeller family carve out a more favorable public image. Chernow, Titan, 581–586.
148. Brown, Rockefeller Medicine Men, 124.
149. Chernow, Titan, 587.
150. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978), 12.
151. Despite his crucial role in advancing medical research, Gates reserved for himself many Victorian and pre-Victorian attitudes, and in his biography he smugly noted that the large size of his family was due to the “Puritan ancestral blood of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, without the least degeneration or dilution. Since 1685 there had been no intermarriage on either side with later arrivals from abroad.” If Gates saw 1685 as an appropriately safe date for the walling off of his family from “later arrivals,” his attitude toward eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century immigrants can be easily inferred. Gates, Chapters, 64–65, 125.
152. One must also consider how many others like Gates might be lurking in the margins of the nebulous Progressive Era. If he managed to reorient the Calvinist imperatives of his ancestors in service to the Rockefellers, his ambitions were far from realized. How many other foundation officers, advisors, and experts lent their vision and passion into ventures that were sanitized for public consumption? An excellent recent collection of essays suggests that the history of philanthropy is entering a new phase of development that might consider such questions. Lawrence J. Friedman and Mark D. McGarvie, eds., Charily, Philanthropy, and Civility in American History (Cambridge, UK, 2003).