Harvard Business School

Walpole, Massachusetts-based paper manufacturer F. W. Bird agreed to become an original subscriber to the Harvard Business School, contributing $500 to the experiment. But he did so with a condition in mind.

“Something should be done to teach a higher code of business morals,” he wrote to Professor Lowell, who had taken responsibility for the fundraising effort. “Running through the scheme that idea [of ethics] should be kept alive.”

Lowell agreed, with a proviso: “I feel that the way to inculcate good morals is not so much formal preaching as letting them appear an integral part of the principles that are explained or demonstrated.”