Casting a "Lengthened Shadow":
Robert Somers Brookings
by Candace O'Connor
In 1895, Robert S. Brookings had just concluded the biggest business deal of his life. Thanks
to his earlier efforts, the firm he had served faithfully for 28 years - the Samuel Cupples
Woodenware Co. - was already the largest of its kind in the United States. In downtown St.
Louis, he had built a giant warehouse complex, strategically located near major rail lines,
that had space for 40 companies doing $100 million of business a year.
He had even managed to keep this "Cupples Station" project afloat during the 1893 business
depression. When American banks refused to loan Brookings the money he needed to finish construction
and stave off bankruptcy, he sailed for London. There he persuaded Seligman Brothers to give
him a $3 million loan - "a personal triumph," said his biographer, Hermann Hagedorn, "that
marked the peak of Brookings' business career."
With Cupples Station now secure, he was seeking something more than mere board membership:
He longed for a sense of purpose, a way to do good in the world. Intrigued by Andrew Carnegie's
notion that the rich are merely stewards of their wealth, he consulted Cupples, his mentor and
friend, on various forms of benevolence. A charitable gift, said Cupples, had to involve some
effort on the recipient's part or it would only confer "the palsy of pauperism." On the other
hand, he added, "education - the higher education which trains for leadership... is at least
free from this defect."
So education it would be. Accepting the board presidency, Brookings devoted himself to Washington
University, which he admired for its strong charter and able faculty. For 33 years he remained
in this role, giving nearly all of his time and at least $5 million of his fortune, including
Cupples Station and his own home on Ellenwood Avenue, to revitalize the University and its medical
school. Much later, Alexander Langsdorf, then dean emeritus of the School of Engineering, said of
him: "If it is true, as Emerson said, that an institution is the lengthening shadow of a man, it
can be said with complete certainty that Washington University, in the form it now has, is the
lengthened shadow of Robert Brookings."
University-building was an odd fate for a man who had little formal education. Born in 1850
in Cecil County, Maryland, he was just two when his father, a country physician, died suddenly.
His mother remarried and Brookings, along with older brother Harry and young sister Mary, grew
up on a farm near Baltimore. He spent part of each summer making rounds with a physician uncle,
acquiring a nickname: "little doctor."
His school was basic and crowded, and Brookings was restless. Harry sent back glowing letters
from St. Louis, where he was now working for a young firm, Cupples & Marston. Eager to get ahead,
Brookings persuaded his mother to let him quit school at age 16, take a quick bookkeeping course,
and join Harry in the West. He arrived on January 1, 1867, crossing the ice on the frozen Mississippi
River. Within weeks, his mother had died of a stroke; within a year, Mary had joined Robert and
Harry in St. Louis.
He took a job as receiving clerk at Cupples & Marston for $25 per month and supplemented his income
by doing evening bookkeeping for the firm, which had been founded in 1851 by Cupples, then a
19-year-old from Ohio. They were wholesale dealers for an eclectic list of items: "Cordage,
Twines, Wicking, Batting, Paper, Brooms, Brushes and Cigars, Wood and Willow Ware, Mats, Matches,
Blacking, Sieves, Bird Cages, and French, English and German Fancy Goods," said their advertising.
Brookings took to the business, coming in early each morning to gain sales experience with customers
who turned up before regular selling hours began.
Promoted to "fiddling drummer" in 1868, he peddled his company's wares throughout a vast territory
that extended from the Mississippi to the Pacific. By train and stagecoach, he traveled 300 days a
year, pleasing his German customers by learning a little of their language, playing his violin on
lonely evenings, making friends wherever he went. "He had the glittering gifts of the successful
salesman," wrote Hagedorn - and orders poured in. In 1872, Cupples made Robert and Harry, his leading
buyer, partners in the firm; another principal was Asa Wallace, who married Mary Brookings.
By 1878, Brookings had groomed replacements and gotten off the road himself. With Samuel Cupples
ill from asthma and often out of town, he and Harry ran the business, positioning it to break into
manufacturing. He remained close to Cupples, who had embraced philanthropy. "There was an attractive
father-and-son relationship between himself and this young man...they reacted on each other, stimulating
each other to think beyond their bank accounts," said Hagedorn.
Brookings reached out to the community, becoming president of the Mercantile Library Association
and helping to found the new St. Louis Choral Society. He wanted more polish so that he could move in
elite social circles, so he learned manners while renting a room from local dowager Sarah Beaumont Keim,
daughter of pioneer physician William Beaumont. University faculty member Marshall Snow came occasionally
to provide academic lessons.
In 1885, Brookings took a year off business and traveled abroad to live in Berlin, practice his beloved
violin, and hike in Switzerland and Bavaria. On one of these hikes he got word that his company - now the
Samuel Cupples Woodenware Co. - had lost a large manufacturing plant in a fire. That news brought him home,
and this time he settled down, buying a series of St. Louis houses and a country castle, Selma Hall.
Once he became Washington University board president in 1895, he threw himself into that work, making
an in-depth study of the University and its needs. Board meetings turned into a kind of monologue in
which Brookings detailed his findings. His knowledge "was nothing short of amazing, and could have been
accomplished only by a man of active and versatile mind, who had withdrawn from practically every other
pursuit," said board member Charles Nagel. In 1905, Brookings wrote to Chancellor Chaplin, "I feel so
intensely about the University that anything which concerns it strikes at my very vitals." Offered a
chance to run for the U.S. Senate in 1909, Brookings, a Republican, sacrificed it in favor of rebuilding
the University's medical school.
In 1917, he was camping in Glacier National Park when he was called to Washington, D.C., by President
Woodrow Wilson, who asked him first to serve on the War Industries Board and a year later to chair the
Price Fixing Committee. These experiences revealed to him the inefficiency of government and awakened
his interest in reform. He reorganized an existing Institute for Government Research, convinced the
Carnegie Foundation to finance a new Institute of Economics, and - with major funding from an old friend,
Isabel Vallé January - founded the Robert Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government, which
was at first part of Washington University, then independent. In 1927 he merged the institutes and school
into the new Brookings Institution, still a prominent think tank in Washington, D.C.
He had never married, and at age 77, after two heart attacks, he finally decided to act. He proposed
to Isabel January, 51, whom he had first met in St. Louis as a pigtailed 8-year-old. She had Washington
University roots as well, since her grandfather, Derrick January, had been an early board member. As a
young widow, Isabel's mother, Grace, had become a dear friend of Brookings - she and Isabel called him
"Bobberts" - and he visited them often after they moved to San Remo, Italy. Grace died in 1919, but Isabel
and Brookings remained close. On June 19, 1927, they eloped, marrying in the rectory of St. Paul's Episcopal
Church in Baltimore. "I am very happy," was Brookings' only public comment.
The next year he resigned as University board president, amid a flood of tributes; the building he had
donated, University Hall, was renamed "Brookings Hall" in his honor. Already the recipient of honorary degrees
from Yale, the University of Missouri, and Harvard, Brookings was awarded Washington University's LL.D. and M.D.
degrees at the 1929 Commencement. Ailing and weak, he spoke only briefly, saying that the University owed him
nothing, that he had always received more than he had given. "As he undertook to express his 'overwhelming
gratitude,'" said the Washingtonian later, "his voice broke and he resumed his seat."
Brookings died in 1932, Isabel in 1965; they are buried side-by-side in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.
Like founder William Greenleaf Eliot, said the Washingtonian, Robert Brookings left an extraordinary legacy:
"Washington University is the product principally of two successive leaders, each in his time with a heart
and mind singularly like that of the other, each devoted idealistically to the cause of education, each
offering his effort, his life and his means unstintingly to the work of his heart. What secular institution
anywhere can point to two such inspired founders of such singleness of purpose as William Greenleaf Eliot
and Robert Somers Brookings?"
This excerpt is from "Beginning a Great Work: Washington University in St. Louis, 1853-2003," by
Candace O'Connor, copyright Washington University in St. Louis 2003.
Source:
Student Life: Washington University in St. Louis -- Beginning A Great Work
Reprinted from 1987 Brookings Institution Archives,
The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.
Robert S. Brookings
Robert Somers Brookings was born on January 22, 1850, in Cecil County, Maryland, to Richard and Mary Carter
Brookings. After Richard Brookings' death in 1952, Mary Carter Brookings married Henry R. Reynold and
moved her family to Baltimore. Robert Brookings left school at sixteen and, in January 1867, he
followed his older brother Harry to St. Louis, Missouri, where he took a job with Cupples and Marston,
woodenware manufacturers. His rise was rapid and steady, fueled by exceptional business talents.
By 1882, when he became vice president and general manager of Samuel Cupples Woodenware Company, Brookings
was a wealthy, successful man.
Brookings had been active in St. Louis civic affairs for some time and in 1896, at forty-six, he decided
to retire completely from business and devote the rest of his life to public service. His first
philanthropic efforts were for Washington University. As president of the board, he undertook
the tasks of rebuilding the university on a new campus and establishing a medical school. He
succeeded at both.
At the same time, Brookings started to get involved in political affairs. In 1913, he visited Berlin
with Andrew Carnegie to represent the United States at the seventy-fifth anniversary of the German
Emperor's reign. In 1914, he attended a meeting n New York and promised his support for a private
institution dedicated to the research of government administration. He fulfilled that promise in
1916 by becoming vice chairman of the new Institute for Government Research. The following year,
President Woodrow Wilson placed Brookings on the War Industries Board and, as the work of the
board developed, he was appointed chairman of the Price-Fixing Committee for the salary of a dollar
a year. From that time, Brookings made his home in Washington, D.C.
In 1922, Brookings helped establish the Institute of Economics, a private institution dedicated
to economic research. Serving as both chairman and president, he also contributed a building at 26
Jackson Place, N.W., to house the new institute. At the same time, he was elected to the Smithsonian
Institution's Board of Regents and continued his work for Washington University in St. Louis. In 1924,
he organized the Robert Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government as an independent
educational institution in Washington, D.C., holding the positions of chairman and president,
and later played a crucial role in the 1927 merger of the school with the Institute for Government
Research and Institute of Economics. Chairman of the board of the newly formed Brookings Institution
from its inception to his death in1932, Brookings was instrumental in raising needed funds, hiring
highly qualified scholars, and formulating the philosophy and policies of the new research institution.
In 1931, he secured the donation of a new building on Lafayette Square from Isabel Valle January
Brookings, who had become his wife on June 19, 1927.
As his health failed, Brookings was forced to retire from active participation in many of his public
service activities. However, his letters continued to record his thoughts and recommendations, especially
about the Brookings Institution. He also expounded his economic philosophy at length in several books
published during his last decade: Industrial Ownership (1925), Economic Democracy (1929), and The Way
Forward (1932). Robert Somers Brookings died on November 15, 1932.
Reprinted from Leslie's Weekly, January 5, 1918
Men Who are Winning the War
Robert Somers Brookings, Plowboy, Merchant and Philanthropist,
Now One of Uncle Sam's Big Purchasing Agents
By William H. Crawford
I was walking down Pennsylvania Avenue with Senator Borah when I saw a very distinguished-looking
old gentleman just in front of us. His hair was snow-white and bushy; so were his whiskers. There
was a certain alertness about his movements that was not in keeping with the evidences of his age.
There goes Dr. Bell, thought I at first; then that it could not be, because this man was slenderer
than the telephone wizard, and much more spry. My curiosity was aroused, so I said to the Senator,
"Who is that gray-haired gentleman?" The Senator looked surprised at my ignorance. "That," said he,
"is Robert S. Brookings, the great St. Louis business man who is helping to 'win the war.' Why don't
you write a story about him?"
A little while later I was talking to Frank A. Scott, chairman of the War Industries Board, when
he suddenly remarked to me, "I'll tell you. Robert S. Brookings can give you that information. He's
got all the facts at his fingertips. He is a most interesting man, by the way, and is doing a wonderful
work for the Government, but so quietly and unostentatiously that it is not attracting the attention
that it deserves. I will take you in and introduce you to him." Then as we walked down the corridor,
Scott continued, "By the way, why don't you write a story about him?" The Fates settled it. Twice in
one day I was advised by two distinguished citizens to make Brookings a subject of one of the "Winning
the War" series.
Every one seemed more impressed with the importance of his work than Mr. Brookings himself. After
he had given me the information that I sought, I asked him if he would give me some points about
himself. A look of amazement came over his face as he said, "I am not working for notoriety, but to
help my country, which I love. I am doing nothing but my duty, so why should the people be interested
in me?" However, I think that Borah and Scott are better judges of his importance than is this modest,
business wizard.
Robert Somers Brookings is chairman of the committee under the General Industries Board for the
purchase of finished products. He has the confidence of the National Council of Defense, of the Cabinet
and is very close to the President. Through his hands will pass the purchasing of all finished supplies
needed by our army and navy in the carrying on of this war. Mr. Brookings comes to his task fully
prepared for this difficult work, having had vast experience in purchasing for one of the largest
mercantile houses in America, dealing in supplies that the Government will need, having been a member
of the firm of Samuel Couples [sic] Wooden Ware Company for many years. Mr. Brookings, now at the head of a
large force, is working night and day to aid the Government in securing the right products for use
in the war at the right prices.
It was with considerable difficulty that I prevailed upon Mr. Brookings to talk about himself. He
is greatly interested in philanthropy, especially along educational lines, and my story would be much
longer if I were writing of Mr. Brookings from that viewpoint. Every few minutes his conversation would
drift back to the subject nearest his heart. I quote from his own remarks:
"My father was Dr. Richard Brookings of Cecil County, Maryland. He graduated at the Maryland Medical
College of Baltimore, and practiced his profession in that county. The country at that time was sparsely
settled both with people and physicians so that father's practice covered a territory twenty miles from
his home. He was often obliged to ride miles on horseback to attend poor people in distant territory, and
his old saddle-bags are still among my treasured possessions."
"Father died when I was three years old, leaving mother with several children and very little money.
Through careful management, mother succeeded in giving us a fairly good education. I was preparing to enter
college at seventeen when mother died, and I was then obliged to earn a living. I decided that there was a
better field for a young man out West, and selected St. Louis as the place to begin. I arrived there with
very little money, but was fortunate in almost immediately securing a position with the growing firm of
Couples [sic] & Marston. I attribute whatever success I have met in this world to the influence of these
two men. A young man could have had no better instructor or guide than Samuel Couples. From the time I
entered his employ until the day of his death, I was intimately associated with him."
"I had been in the employ of Couples & Marston less than a year when it became evident to me that the
one field for which I was fitted was salesmanship; so I appealed to Mr. Couples [sic] to give me a chance to go
on the road. Duties of this kind had not been assigned to so young a man by this firm before, but Mr.
Couples [sic] decided to give me a chance. I was told to pack my grip with samples and try my luck. My trial
trip was down the Missouri River, visiting small towns where the river steamers made landings.
If I made good, I was to continue; if not, I was to go back into the office. Possibly my extreme youth
aroused the sympathy of the merchants. Anyhow, they gave me the orders and in a year or two I was covering
the entire territory from the Gulf to the British possessions, and all the way to the Pacific Coast. My
employers gave me a partnership before I was twenty-one."
"The firm grew rapidly. It was the old story of a business developing quickly in the West and Southwest.
Our firm was soon recognized as the leading institution of its kind in the country. I continued actively
in business until middle life, when, having amassed all the money that I needed, I retired from active business
and have since devoted my life to so disposing of my fortune as to make it of the greatest advantage to
humanity, until called to Washington to lend my experience and energy to the Government."
This brief résumé of his life does not tell of the hardships encountered in his rise from poverty to
affluence and power. It makes no mention of the valiant struggle that he made to assist his mother, how he
followed the plow all day, or industriously wielded the hoe or rode the harrow; how as a little chap he
perched upon the meal sack and rode to the old mill; how the mother gathered her children about her in the
evenings and taught them lessons in self-reliance and dependence upon a higher power.
It gives no account of his school days in West Nottingham Academy, a country school near his home, to
which he was sent as a youth. It tells nothing of the industry and intelligence which he must have displayed
to have inspired a keen business man, such as Mr. Couples [sic], to entrust a seventeen-year-old boy with such
responsibility. It tells nothing of his trepidation as he approached his first customer, nor of the joy
that he must have felt when he obtained his first order, nor of the glow of satisfaction he must have felt
upon receiving from his employer and benefactor his first letter of approval and praise for work well done;
nor of the enterprise and industry that were necessary in order to enable him to so rapidly build up the
trade of his company until it extended over the entire Western section of the United States; nor of the
stage-coach and wagon drives to cover virgin fields of trade.
As an instance of his untiring business energy, even when off on pleasure trips, they tell the following
story about him: Once, when visiting Alaska for rest and recreation, he was sauntering through a store and
saw some clothes-pins that he recognized as having been manufactured by his company, but they bore the
trademark of another firm. Immediately he was interested. He inquired of the merchant as to where he had
purchased them, and was told that he had bought them cheaper than he could from the Couples [sic] firm. Mr. Brookings
could not understand how a man could buy them from a manufacturer and sell them for less than Couples [sic]
& Marston could afford to sell them, so he immediately began an inquiry. He found out that his firm's Alaskan
business was being handled via the Cape of Good Hope, a long, expensive sea trip for an inexpensive but
bulky article. The freight rates were high, greatly increasing the cost to the merchant. He also found that
his competitor was shipping them via Vancouver, a much less expensive and shorter route. The trade in Alaska
would not amount to much, and the difference in price at which he had sold wholesale and the one that he
would secure by selling direct was not a large sum. Yet he immediately saw to it that the shipping directions
were changed, that the Alaskan trade was vigorously pushed, and today nearly all Alaska buys its clothes-pins
from the Samuel Couples [sic] Wooden Ware Company.
Nor does Mr. Brookings' own story recount the splendid work that Mr. Brookings has done along educational
lines, since he determined to pay back to the world those blessings which his industry had enabled him to collect.
It tells nothing of the growth of the great Washington University under his wise guidance. A very large part of Mr.
Brookings' reputation depends upon his management of this institution. He was elected a director of the University
and, in 1896, resigned as vice-president and general manager of the Samuel Couples [sic] Wooden Ware Company, and
accepted the presidency of the University. The school at that time had a good local reputation, but it was far
from wealthy and had not attempted to spread beyond the confines of its immediate territory. Soon, however, it
reaped the benefit of Mr. Brookings' executive ability. He endowed the University with his own personal funds and,
securing the interest of his friends, placed it upon a solid, financial foundation, as well as organized it along
business lines. New schools were opened and those that already existed were more closely correlated, and only the
best professors and instructors that could be secured were selected, as is evidenced by the fact that Secretary of
Agriculture Houston was called to the Cabinet from the chancellorship of this school. From a second-rate or
third-rate college it improved until it is one of the largest and best managed universities now in America.
The Couples [sic] Station in St. Louis is doubly a monument to him: First, to his ingenuity and business acumen,
for it was devised by him, although it is named for his senior partner; Second, to his generosity, for he and Mr.
Couples [sic] gave it to Washington University for an endowment. Large shippers in St. Louis had long been handicapped
by the distance from the railroad station to their places of business. They had large drayage, storage and warehouse
bills to pay, which in the days of keen competition militated against them in price-making. In order to avoid this,
Mr. Brookings succeeded in getting his partner to cooperate with him and they purchased a large tract of land
conveniently located in the city and placed a tremendous building upon it, the construction of which was such that
railroad tracks could be laid to the doors of each separate section of the building. Then he put in every modern,
mechanical contrivance for rapidly unloading freight, and invited the shippers of St. Louis to come in under this
one roof. As a consequence, the St. Louis merchants can handle their goods without any expense of cartage, drayage,
warehousing, etc. They have now an advantage over the wholesale merchants in other cities.
Then he put in every modern, mechanical contrivance for rapidly unloading freight, and invited the shippers of
St. Louis to come in under this one roof. As a consequence, the St. Louis merchants can handle their goods without
any expense of cartage, drayage, warehousing, etc. They have now an advantage over the wholesale merchants in other cities.
When Mr. Brookings and his partner determined to endow Washington University, they assured it a certain income by
giving to it the Couples [sic] Station. Mr. Brookings is still general manager of the Station, but turns over his twenty-five
thousand dollars salary to the college. And this is not Mr. Brookings' only philanthropy. The Mercantile Library, an old
institution in St. Louis, was badly located in an unpopular section of the city. It had very little endowment and was not
patronized sufficiently to provide funds for its upkeep. Mr. Brookings was elected a member of the board of directors and
immediately began to use his business acumen for the advantage of the library. Bonds were floated sufficient for a new
building, accommodating the library and having large office space. The rent received was sufficient to pay its bonded
indebtedness and taxes, and provided sufficient funds for the library's maintenance.
In 1913, Mr. Brookings gave an additional million dollars to erect a medical department in Washington University.
When he was elected president of the trustees, he cancelled the University's indebtedness out of his own fortune.
Source: Brookings Land and Township Company
Robert Somers Brookings
Robert S. Brookings was born and acquired his early education in Cecil County,
Maryland, before moving to St. Louis, Missouri, to begin his career at age 17. He began as a
clerk and later salesman for Cupples & Marston., manufacturers and distributors of
woodenware. In less than four years he became a partner in the firm at age twenty-one.
He achieved remarkable success in business at an early age, and began to reach out for a
broader perspective by acquiring education and European culture. He read deeply under the
direction of Dean Snow of Washington College in St. Louis and travelled extensively in
Europe.
As a civic leader and philanthropist, Brookings turned his creative energy to building
Washington University and other St. Louis institutions until, with the coming of World War I,
he moved to Washington and onto the world stage. He served on the new War Industries
Board as commissioner of Finished Products and Chairman of the Price Fixing Committee.
In this role he became the link between the government and hundreds of industries. He
achieved remarkable results under very difficult circumstances, and for his war service he was
recognized with the U.S. Distinguished Service Medal, the French Legion of Honor, and
Italy's Commander of the Crown.
His work within the government during the war showed him the need for improved economic
research and a trained corps of civil servants. He established a graduate school as a part of
Washington University and two institutes to address these problems. Finally, Brookings'
dream of an independent research institution devoted to solving problems of government and
the economy became a reality with the merger in 1927 of the Robert Brookings Graduate
School, the Institute of Economics, and the original Institute for Government Research
established in 1916.
Source: The Brookings Institution
