[4] Additionally, Samuel Rosenwald served as the president of the B’rith Sholom synagogue of the Springfield Hebrew Congregation, where Julius received a Jewish education and learned lifelong lessons to shape his values.

Rosenwald had heard about other clothiers who had begun to manufacture clothing according to standardized sizes from data collected during the American Civil War.

Another was the Hollywood film producer Armand Deutsch, who believed that he was the intended target of the thrill killers Leopold and Loeb, who kidnapped and murdered his schoolmate Robert "Bobby" Franks on May 21, 1924.

[7] Rosenwald brought to the company a rational management philosophy and diversified product lines: dry goods, consumer durables, drugs, hardware, furniture, and nearly anything else a farm household could desire.

Rosenwald declared this to be greatly excessive and additionally claimed that the stock of the New York company did not represent tangible assets.

The indictment was quashed in March 1915 when Rosenwald's attorneys convinced the Court that the section of law which provided for prosecution of such cases had been repealed.

[9] The company was laid low during the post-World War I recession as a severe depression hit the nation's farms after farmers had over-expanded their holdings.

First he oversaw the design and construction of the company's first department store within Sears, Roebuck's massive 16-hectare (40-acre) headquarters complex of offices, laboratories, and mail-order operations at Homan Ave. and Arthington St. on Chicago's West Side.

[13] Additionally, Rosenwald was concerned about justice for all, and he believed that the plight of African Americans was deeply connected with the inequities faced by Jews throughout their history.

Rosenwald’s philanthropic pursuits thus combined his strong sense of responsibility to aid in social inequality with his reverence for education and learning.

Rosenwald made common cause with Washington and was asked to serve on the board of directors of the Tuskegee Institute in 1912, a position he held for the remainder of his life.

Booker T. Washington encouraged Rosenwald to address the poor state of African-American education in the U.S., which suffered from inadequate buildings and books.

Rosenwald provided funds to build six small schools in rural Alabama, which were constructed and opened in 1913 and 1914, and overseen by Tuskegee.

[15] Inspired by the social progressivism of Jane Addams, Grace Abbott, Paul J. Sachs, and the Reform Judaism of Emil Hirsch and Julian Mack (many of whom were personal friends as well), Rosenwald devoted his time, energy, and money to philanthropy.

[citation needed] In his words, written in 1911: The horrors that are due to race prejudice come home to the Jew more forcefully than to others of the white race, on account of the centuries of persecution which they have suffered and still suffer.The collaboration between Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald was the subject of the 2015 documentary Rosenwald, subtitled[16] The Remarkable Story of a Jewish Partnership with African American Communities by writer, producer and director Aviva Kempner,[17][18] which won Best Documentary Jury Award at the Teaneck International Film Festival and the Lipscomb University Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, Nashville Film Festival.

[citation needed] Over the course of his life, Rosenwald and his fund donated over $70 million to public schools, colleges and universities, museums, Jewish charities and African-American institutions.

The Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments was one of the first American housing developments to mix residential, commercial and social uses and still stands.

Rosenwald planned the development of 421 units to provide sound housing for African Americans and to relieve the tremendous overcrowding due to Chicago's pervasive racial segregation.

For my part, I always believe most large fortunes are made by men of mediocre ability who tumbled into a lucky opportunity and couldn’t help but get rich and that others, given the same chance, would have done far better with it.