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In the early days of the long fight there were those on the one hand who advocated "moral suasion," and on the other, "legal suasion." Moral suasion was found inadequate. Now we have legal suasion, and its adequacy is still in grave question. Is it time again for moral suasion, on behalf of the common good, as affected both by the use of alcohol and by respect for the government and its laws? After all, any national way of life reflects a national sentiment, and that is the sum of individual feeling. Here then, is an issue still an issue which no individual can escape.

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IV

THE NEW USES OF GREAT WEALTH

PARTICULARLY BY THE ROCKEFELLERS

O, IT is excellent

To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.

MANY years ago these familiar words fixed themselves in my memory through their application, in the ruthless irony of youth, to a college contemporary most feebly endowed with physical powers. Now they come back as applicable to the industrial dynasts of America, so multiplied in numbers through recent decades, so variously employing their "giant's strength," and so often employing it for purposes other than tyrannous.

Only in the past fifty out of the approximately three hundred years of American history has it been possible to put great wealth to its new uses, for the simple reason that, in the present meaning of the term, it did not exist. Fifty years ago, indeed, it was only beginning to foreshadow what it means to-day, for it was not until the industrial development following the Civil War got into its full swing

that vast fortunes began to accumulate in private hands, and individuals had to ask themselves what in the world they could do with their embarrassing riches. Even before the time of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Sr., others must have found themselves in the dilemma he recognized when he wrote:

These rich men we read about in the newspapers cannot get personal returns beyond a well-defined limit for their expenditures. They cannot gratify the pleasures of the palate beyond very moderate bounds, since they cannot purchase a good digestion; they cannot lavish very much money on fine raiment for themselves or their families without suffering from public ridicule; and in their homes they cannot go much beyond the comforts of the less wealthy without involving them in more pain than pleasure. As I study wealthy men, I can see but one way in which they can secure a real equivalent for money spent, and that is to cultivate a taste for giving where the money may produce an effect which will be a lasting gratification.

The conspicuous American precedents for securing this lasting gratification from private benefactions are found in the field of education. With all its limitations, Girard College in Philadelphia, admitting only white male orphans between six and ten, and as carefully excluding, even as visitors, all ecclesiastics, missionaries, and ministers of whatever sect, represented, before the Civil War, the effort of Stephen Girard, the most successfully self

made merchant of his time, to serve the public through education in its earlier stages. In its higher stages the cause of education has been served, incessantly from the beginning, by the gifts of individuals to the older endowed schools and colleges. No sooner was the Civil War behind us than three great new institutions of learning sprang into being through the generosity of individuals: Cornell University in 1865; Lehigh University in 1866; Johns Hopkins University in 1867. Meanwhile the marked increase in the number of state universities through the operations of the "Land Grant" Act of 1862 did not diminish the flow of individual private benefactions to the existing endowed colleges or discourage the establishment of new institutions. As wealth increased, it was perhaps most of all through an extension of the old American tradition of giving to the cause of education that its expenditure for the general good took form.

But the fortunes at the command of the donors of

fifty years ago, magnificently large as their gifts then seemed, were small affairs in comparison with later accumulations. As the country grew and its industries developed, - especially through the geometric progression of combined industrial units, the rewards for the type of ability which formed the units and engineered their combination began to

exceed anything previously imagined. If these rewards have sometimes been used for futile purposes of ostentation, self-aggrandizement, gratification of the senses, and the exercise of personal power, there is surely no occasion for surprise. The pursuit of happiness takes many forms, varying widely in wisdom and efficacy. The reassuring thing is that in so very considerable a number of instances, a sense of stewardship, of holding in trust a power to confer enormous benefits, both immediate and distant, upon mankind has been a dominating impulse in the industrially dynastic families of the United States.

The results of action upon this impulse have appreciably affected American life. It may therefore be profitable to look at a few conspicuous instances of the voluntary employment of great wealth for the common good, and, in order to escape from an array of generalities into a concrete illustration of their drift, to consider the benefactions with which the name of Rockefeller is associated.

I

In looking at even an abridged list of the great private benefactions of recent years, the regularity with which a profitable industry relates itself in turn to each benefaction cannot escape notice. The

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