The Lowell Touch

In 1838 proper Bostonians were properly appalled at the way Amherst was snapping up scholarship students and leaving Harvard far behind. Good Harvardmen quickly raised an $11,350 fund of their own; soon it was known as the Lowell Trust, after the Lowell family treasurers, who began running it in their spare time during the Civil War. In 1922 the job fell to a modern and most civic-minded Lowell, astute Banker Ralph of the Boston Safe Deposit & Trust Co. By last week, when he finally decided to hand the reins over to Harvard itself, the fund had lent $1,435,969 to 10,500 Harvard students, including eight who became college presidents,* two Massachusetts governors,/- 60 college professors.

This was impressive enough. A more startling statistic still was the size of the fund, whose borrowers have rarely defaulted. When Ralph Lowell took over 37 years ago, the fund was a relatively piddling $238,000. By "simple New England prudence" (i.e., buying blue-chip stocks and bonds), Harvardman ('12) Lowell in his off hours has boosted the fund to $2,104,417.05.

* Among them: Thomas Hill (Harvard), William T. Reid (University of California).

/- George D. Robinson (1884-87), John Q. Adams Brackett (1889-90).

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