Paul Harris

Paul P. Harris was the founder of Rotary. He was born in Racine, Wisconsin on April 19, 1868, and spent his early years in Wallingford, Vermont, prior to attending the University of Vermont, Princeton University and the University of Iowa.  Following his graduation from the law school of the University of Iowa in 1891 he spent the next five years seeing the world and in coming to know his fellow man before settling down to practice law in Chicago.

He worked as a newspaper reporter, a business college teacher, a stock company actor and as a cowboy.   He traveled extensively as a salesman for a marble and granite concern in the U.S.A. and Europe.  These varied experiences broadened his vision and were of material assistance in the early extension of Rotary.

In 1896, Paul Harris went to Chicago to practice law.   One day in 1900 he dined with a lawyer friend in Rogers Park, a residential section of Chicago.   After dinner they took a walk and he was impressed by the fact that his friend stopped at several stores and shops in the neighborhood and introduced him to the proprietors, who were his friends.   Paul Harris' law clients were business friends, not social friends, but this experience caused him to wonder why he couldn't make social friends out of at least some of his business friends - and he resolved to organize a club which would band together a group of representative business and professional men in friendship and fellowship.