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THE BETTER ELEMENT
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Despite the obvious disparities of time and place, two remarkable parallels exist between the circumstances and conditions into which the PJ Rotary Club was born and those which attended the birth of Rotary itself almost half a century before. Both were products of societies which were passing through an era of stressful evolution, change and expansion. And both were variegated, multi-ethnic societies in search of a common national identity.
The new town of PJ, the satellite of the capital of the recently independent Federation of Malaya, formed in itself a symbol of this new nation with its inhabitants of all ethnic groups settled side by side in their neat, ordered suburban houses which contrasted so sharply with the traditional, mono-ethnic pattern of settlement in which the majority of Malaysians still lived. It was also a town whose factories built on soil which had once enriched groves of rubber signified the conversion of this country from its former dependence on producing raw materials for a colonial economy into one which would vie to become an industrialised nation holding its own in the world market. And its citizens were all members of that first generation of Malaysians to savour the challenges and fruits of national sovereignty and independence.
The USA in 1905 was certainly longer established than Malaya/Malaysia was in 1961, but for all that it was still a nation undergoing a period of rapid growth and change and turmoil. For from the nucleus of east coast colonial settlements that had won their independence from Britain over a hundred years before, the nation had extended and expanded until it stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific shore, and was left only with land frontiers to the north and the south. But it was only at the turn of the century that the USA started to emerge from its closet and make its influence felt as a world power, of which the war with Spain and the annexation of the Philippines were the most tangible signs. But during the course of that first 125 years of independence the character of the United States had changed out of all recognition. What had originally been - leaving aside the Red Indians for a minute - an Anglo-French preserve had become the receptacle for the poor and downtrodden of Europe and Asia, particularly in the case of the latter from China and Japan. The USA had also established itself as one of the most advanced industrialised powers and was already recognized as the world's leader in the science of business. In fact, big business was a peculiarly American phenomenon, personified by characters like Carnegie of steel, Rockefeller of oil, Vanderbilt of the railroads and McCormick of prairie farming. Big business, with its monopolies and trusts and insider agreements, dominated the American scene, politically, socially and economically as never before.
In the 1900s, however, there was a growing swell of popular sentiment against the tutelage of big business and the political corruption with which it had become identified, and a reaction against the gross materialism which seemed to pervade all public life. The large and growing middle and professional classes campaigned against the tyranny of big business bosses and their political henchmen and fought for a place in the corporate sun. Labour struggled for an end to gross exploitation and strove to win decent working conditions, while the many but isolated minority ethnic groups, above all the black community, strove to win a proper voice and place in the affairs of the nation.
This multi-faceted movement gathered steam during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, reinforced by a public consciousness awakened by writers such as Mark Twain, Upton Sinclair, Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser who exposed the malpractices, corruption and excesses prevalent in the social fabric. By 1900 a lot had already been achieved in getting rid of the worst abuses, and the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (1901-8) was marked by further reforms which consolidated the process. It was in the middle of the reformist Roosevelt era that Rotary was born.
Every Rotarian knows the story of how one February evening in Chicago in 1905, Paul Harris, the lawyer, got together with three of his business clients - one a coal merchant, another a mining engineer, and the third a merchant tailor - and how between them they decided to form a club for businessmen and professionals. 'While lacking qualities which would have distinguished them from others of their kind', wrote Harris later on, 'it may nevertheless be said that they were fairly representative of what in common parlance would have been termed "the better element".'
From this small nucleus of four Chicago business and professional men - their number had climbed to thirty by the end of the same year - all of whom, to quote Harris once more, were 'natural products of the times, and subject to its natural frailties' - grew the worldwide federation of clubs known today as Rotary International, with a membership reaching over a million. At first the flame flickered uncertainly. It was another three years before the second Rotary Club was established by Paul Harris in San Francisco. But within the next two years fourteen new clubs sprang into existence and in 1910 met together in Chicago to found the National Association of Rotary Clubs.
It was a short step from being national to going international. The first Rotary Club outside the United States was formed in Canada, followed soon after by another in Britain, and by 1912 this had led to the establishment of the International Association of Rotary Clubs.* After the end of the First World War, the spawning of Rotary clubs outside the United States proceeded apace and spread to Asia and Africa as well.
*This name was shortened to Rotary International in 1922.
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