Harvard Business School

As part of a larger effort to raise money for the proposed school of business, Professor Lowell wrote to Charles Sumner Bird—one of Lowell’s Harvard College classmates, and a successful Massachusetts paper manufacturer—in June 1907.

“Dear Charlie,” Lowell began. “Professor Taussig and I are trying to get up this school, the idea being that while it is absurd to try to teach those things in business which make the chief difference between the successful and unsuccessful man … nevertheless, we believe that it is possible to teach in a comparatively short space of time a great deal that a young man going into business much take much longer to learn by the present system. I mean such matters as accounting in a large sense; that is, not book-keeping, but how to tell from accounts just what the cost of any branch of the business is. Such things, also as the methods of organization, which after all depend upon certain general principles that are more or less applicable to all large concerns. We can also teach the method of using official and company reports, accounts, etc., so as to find how business is going.

“In short, we feel that although we could not give your son, for example, any special knowledge of manufacturing paper, we could give him a great deal that would make him more immediately useful to you in the office. Every professional school is really a ladder or short cut to the cabin windows; and now that everyone begins business or a profession so late in life, it is almost necessary to shorten the time before one becomes valuable.”

In a handwritten postscript, Lowell added yet another prescient thought: “The school to succeed must be in close touch with the business world, and have among its instructors men from active life.”