FOUNDER OF ROTARY

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 31, 6 February 1935, Page 15

FOUNDER OF ROTARY

MR. PAUL P. HARRIS

The founder of the1 Rotary movement, Mi-. Paul P. Harris, who is to visit New Zealand in April, was born April 19, 1868, at Racine, Wisconsin. He was educated in the public schools and academies in Vermont, the University of Vermont, and Princeton University. He took his'; law course at the University of' lowa, graduated in 1891, and was admitted to the practice of law in lowa the same year. He received' his Illinois licence 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 Thompson, a native of Edinburgh, Scotland. After completing his. .law I course in. 1891, he spent the following five" years! in seeing the , world) and ! learning to know-his fellows by actual contact with thenV 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 1905, as a result of his study and reflections,-Mr. Harris-had formulated a definite philosophy of business relations, Calling, together three of his friends, each of whom was engaged in a different' line of: business, he expounded his theory 'to them. , This group j was the nucleus of the , Rotary Club of Chicago. Through the propaganda of Paul Harris, this novel orga^ nisation 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 appar-, ent. Thereupon Paul Harris, Chesley-j R. Perry, and others organised the National Association of Rotary Clubs in America in 1910. Later through j the extension of the movement into' Canada and Great Britain,' the Inter-1 national Association of .Rotary Clubs, was formed. This later was renamed' Rotary International.-. 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 PresidentEmeritus of Rotary InternationaL I