The
first ‘Rotary Club’ was founded by an American lawyer Paul
P. Harris, in Chicago in February 1905. A newcomer to Chicago he wanted two
things very badly - more friends and more business, and he hit on an idea which
gave him both. He formed a small circle of similarly minded men, but took care
to ensure that they all had different businesses so that there was no conflict
of interest. This was the origin of the classification system. They met over the
lunch hour one day a week rotating around each others offices, but soon the
circle became too large for office meetings and regular lunches were
substituted, but retaining the name ‘Rotary Club’.
How do we know all this? Well, the foregoing account was given to us by Paul Harris himself on one of his visits to our club, for he had a special interest in Edinburgh as his wife whom he called ‘Scotch Lassie Jean’ was born and brought up here.
The San Franciso Club followed the Chicago one and a member of that club, Stuart Morrow, returned to Ireland and founded clubs in Dublin, Belfast, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool and Birmingham. The Rotary Club of Edinburgh first met on the 23rd of September 1912. Stuart Morrow was our first secretary, and his successor was to have a profound effect on the Rotary movement.
Thomas Stephenson, known as Doctor Tom, took stock of Rotary and considered that the commercial advantages offered by being a Rotarian were not only a poor objective in themselves, but could well alienate new Rotarians. He, along with other office bearers in the club, took every opportunity to stress this to other clubs and he was instrumental in evolving the idea of ‘service not self’. Soon, the commercial aspect of fellowship was abolished and replaced with the philosophy of service to the community. Dr Tom was also responsible for starting our Club bulletin in 1914 and the predecessor to the Rotary magazine in 1915.