Education: Long Yell For Jimmy

“Above all things he has recognized that the college is for the students, and whatever occurred the students were always uppermost in his mind. They did not have to be told that, they knew it instinctively, and no cheers have ever echoed on the campus to compare with the ‘long yell for Jimmy.’ It was the one way they could adequately express their love and devotion.”

This was only one of the eulogies tendered last week at a banquet in Manhattan. Few U. S. college students or alumni have the occasion, or the inclination, to give a long yell for the grandson of one of the college’s first patrons. But Colgate University yelled lustily for 68-year-old “Jimmy” Colgate at a banquet celebrating his 50 years of association with the university, as student, alumnus, patron. President Hoover sent a telegram of congratulation. So did Chief Justice of the U. S. Charles Evans Hughes, who went to Colgate for two years. Finance Chairman Myron Charles Taylor of U. S. Steel Corp. praised James Colby Colgate as a banker. Alumnus Harry Emerson Fosdick (1900) recalled how, as a poor student years ago in Manhattan, he took Sunday dinners with Mr. & Mrs. Colgate.

William Colgate (1783-1857), founder of the soap company, was a trustee of Baptist Theological Seminary at New York City which, established in 1817, was incorporated with the Baptist Education Society at Hamilton, N. Y. They became Hamilton Literary & Theological Institution, then Madison University, and in 1890, Colgate University. Son James Boorman Colgate gave the university $2,200,000 during his lifetime, and joined with other Colgates in the $1,000,000 Dodge Memorial Fund. Son Samuel gave money also but sent his sons Gilbert and the late Sidney Morse Colgate to Yale. Of the present generation it is “Jimmy” Colgate, son of James Boorman, who is the university’s pet. When he was graduated in 1884 the university was small, pastoral. Its enrollment is limited to 1,000 students; but one of Mr. Colgate’s first gifts was a fund of $1,000 a year for beautification. Since then his benefactions have been numerous, but quiet and personal, like the swimming pool whose wall bears a bronze plaque: In memory of the Mothers who, with our College, have tried to teach us to live cleanly, think clearly, play fairly, this Pool is given by—Jim.

James Colgate went into banking with his father instead of joining the family soap company. He was secretary of the Colgate Board of Trustees from 1892 to 1921, has been president of the board since then. A famed banker (Jas. B. Colgate & Co.), he is also in life insurance, utilities, metals. Tall, mustachioed, looking very financial, Banker Colgate farms in Vermont, fishes in Canada. But the university claims him as its Jim. Said Colgate’s Dean William Henry Crawshaw last week: “I think he must have been rocked in his cradle to the tune of ‘Roll, Colgate, Roll.’ Perhaps there is where the song originated.”