Part 15 (2/2)
Rockefeller's total benefactions probably exceed a total of thirty reatly increased, for he has just asked Congress to charter an institution to be known as the Rockefeller Foundation, which he will endow on an enorh centuries to coe of heart, too, toward the public During his early years, he gained a reputation for coldness and reserve, which made him probably the best-hated ed about Instead of refusing hilad to talk, anxious to show the public that he was by no means such a monster as he was painted; and he has even, quite recently, written his life story and given it to a great azine for publication Seldom before has any public e of heart He still re face he has lately turned to the world conceals the realcountenance he wore in former years
As the dramatist saves his finest effect for the fall of the curtain, so we have saved for the last the ie, whose total benefactions amount to at least one hundred millions of dollars A suie is so far fron of di out as a poor boy, on the lowest round of the ladder, he acquired this iie was born in Scotland in 1835 His father was a weaver, at one time fairly well-to-do, for he owned four hand loo, and after a long struggle, ending in hardshi+p and poverty, the looms were sold at a sacrifice and the faie happened to have two sisters living at Pittsburgh, and there the family settled--by one of those curious chances of fate, the very place in all the world best suited to the developenius
At the age of twelve years, he beca that of bobbin-boy in a cotton hany City, where his salary was 120 a week Pretty soon he was set to firing a sine in the cellar of the mill, but he did not like this work, and finally secured a position as raph Coht, at the end of the month, he did not receive his pay with the rest of the boys, but was told to wait till the others had left the roo, and wondered how he could ever go home and tell his father and iven an increase in salary, from 1125 to 1350 a ie, in telling of the incident, long afterwards ”Talk about your ave me the happiness of that rise of 225 a e where we lived, I handed ht in bed told brother To, Sunday, ere all sitting at the breakfast table, and I said: 'Mother, I have soave her the 225, and told her how I got it Father and she were delighted to hear of ood fortune, but, motherlike, she said I deserved it, and then caiven, in 1907, in his honor as ”Father of the Corps,” by the surviving raph Corps of the Civil War, that Mr Carnegie spoke these words, and he continued as follows:
”Coe its sacred memories with the richest millionaire's son who ever breathed What does he know about mother or father? They are mere names to him Give me the life of the boy whose el and saint, all in one, and whose father is guide, exemplar, and friend These are the boys who are born to the best fortune Some men think that poverty is a dreadful burden, and that wealth leads to happiness They have lived only one side; they iine the other I have lived both, and I know there is very little in wealth that can add to human happiness, beyond the sh are rare My experience is that wealth is apt to take the s ahead of our story That sood deal to the little fa from dawn to dark in the cotton- what she could to the fa shoes in the intervals of housework Meantime the superintendent of the co happened to h office, and it was discovered that both of them had been born near the sa to do with the boy's subsequent pro that forty years later, he was able to secure for his old employer the United States consulshi+p to the town of their birth But for the tier-boy He soon learned the Morse alphabet and practisedbefore the operators arrived He was soon able to send and receive ister--a steel pen which ee on a narrow strip of paper But young Carnegie soon progressed a step beyond this, and was soon able to read the ister It was, of course, only a short tiularly installed as operator
He was not to reraph business, however, for Thoh division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, offered hiie proe of seventeen, entered the employ of the road His promotion was rapid, and he rose to be superintendent of the Pittsburgh division before the success of his other ventures caused hin from the service These ventures were, in the first place, investment in the newly-developed oil-fields of Pennsylvania, which yielded a great profit, and afterwards the establish-mill, in the develop up the most complete system of iron and steel industries ever controlled by an individual Soained from the fact that, when the United States Steel Corporation was organized in 1901 to take over Mr
Carnegie's interests he received for thee bonds to the amount of three hundred million dollars
It is this su of for years Unlike most other philanthropists, he has not used his wealth to endow a great university, but has devoted it mainly to another branch of education, the establishment of free public libraries He conceived the unique plan of offering a library building, coree toof 1909, had, under this plan, given nearly fifty-two s, of which 1167 are in this country
Aifts was one of 12,000,000, for the founding at Washi+ngton of an institution ”which shall, in the broadest and ation, research, and discovery, show the application of knowledge to the is, laboratories, books, and apparatus as iven to the great Carnegie Institute, of Pittsburgh; still another ten iven to Scottish universities, and still another for the purpose of providing pensions for college professors in the United States and Canada; and finally five millions for the establishment of a fund to be used for the benefit of the dependants of those losing their lives in heroic effort to save their fellow-reat benefaction will next be announced cannot, of course, be foretold, but that so can scarcely be doubted, since Mr Carnegie has announced his ah born in Scotland and reat estate there, he is an A the Civil War by serving as superintendent of raph lines in the east; and has proved it ht for civic betterovernment Thousands of benefactions stand to his credit, besides the great ones which have been mentioned above, and it is doubtful if in the history of the world there has ever been anotherit in such a way
We will end here the story of Ah scarcely the half of it has been told During the last forty years, not less than one hundred es; nearly as iven for the endowment of hospitals, sanitariuiven for other educational or charitable purposes, so that, of the great fortunes which have been accumulated in this country, at least three hundred millions have been returned, in some form or other, to the people And the end is not yet Scientific philanthropy is as yet in its infancy Just the other day, Mrs Russell Sage set apart the sum of ten million dollars for a fund whose chief and almost sole purpose it is to obtain accurate infor social and economic conditions--in other words, to furnish the data upon which the scientific philanthropy of the future will be based The disposition toward such e-up of wealth is one of thedevelops of finance are co to realize that, after all, wealth is useless unless it is used for good, and the next half century will no doubt witness the establishment of philanthropic enterprises on a scale hitherto unknown to history
We have already said that the highest for of self, and we shall close this chapter with a brief consideration of the careers of a few of the many men and women who, in the course of American history, have devoted their lives to the betterospel or as laborers for so ministers, no name has been more widely known than that of Beecher--first, Lyman Beecher, and afterwards his brilliant son, Henry Ward Beecher Lyman Beecher was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1775, the son of a blacks and far His love of books soon manifested itself, however, and raduated at the age of twenty-two A further year of study enabled him to enter the ational church at Litchfield, Connecticut, and soon took rank as the leading clergye won a wide reputation, and in 1832, he was offered the presidency of the newly-organized Lane seminary, at Cincinnati This place he held for twenty years, and his naue, until his death
Soon after he assuan to assume the acute phase which ended in the Civil War Mr Beecher was, of course, an Abolitionist, and for a time lived in a turmoil, for many of the seminary students were from the south, while Cincinnati itself was so near the borderline that there was a great pro-slavery senti Mr Beecher's absence, his trustees tried to allay excitement and, in a way, carry water on both shoulders, by forbidding all further discussion of slavery in the se the institution, for the students withdrew in a body, and while a feere persuaded to return, the great majority refused to do so and laid the foundation of Oberlin College For seventeen years, Mr Beecher labored to restore the seminary's prosperity, but finally abandoned the task in despair He resigned the presidency in 1852, intending to devote his re years to the revision and publication of his works, but a paralytic stroke put an end to his active career
Mr Beecher's vigor of ree to his children, of whom he had thirteen Of Harriet Beecher Stoe have already spoken, but by far the most famous of the an early desire for a sea-faring life in favor of the e in 1837, and ten years later entered upon the pastorate of Plymouth church, in Brooklyn, where his chief faest in the country, soon became inadequate to hold the crohich flocked to hear his brilliant preaching As a lecturer and platform orator he soon came to be in such dee that Christianity was not a series of dogmas, but a rule of everyday life, and did not hesitate to attack the abuses of the day froue, and his publications were many and important All in all, he was one of the ures that has ever occupied an Ahty antagonist, and in 1826 he had been called to Boston to take up the cudgels against the so-called Unitarian movement which had developed there, under the leadershi+p of Willia For six years and a half, he wielded the cudgels of controversy, but with no great effect, for Channing was a foeraduated at Harvard in 1798, a sular capacity for winning devoted attachment from all hom he came in contact For two years, he served as tutor in a fainia, where he acquired an abhorrence of slavery that lasted through life Upon his return north, he began the study of theology at Cae, and in 1803, became pastor of a church in Boston, where he soon attracted attention by sermons of a rare ”fervor, solemnity, and beauty” He was froht, which caave to the body so-called a consciousness of its position and a clear statement of its convictions with his sermon delivered at Baltimore, in 1819, on the occasion of the ordination of Jared Sparks For the fifteen years succeeding, Channing was best known to the public as the leader of the Unitarianthat period constitute the best body of practical divinity which that movement has produced In later years, he was identified with many philanthropical and reform movements, and was one of the pillars of the anti-slavery cause, though never adopting the extreme opinions of the abolitionists Of his rare quality and power as a pulpit orator e of sixty-two reive a list of the men and women who have sacrificed their lives in the atteospel of Christianity to heathen nations is beyond the limits of a book like this, but at least mention can be made of two of the earliest, Adoniram Judson and his wife, whose experiences for chapters in missionary history
Adoniram Judson was born in Malden, Massachusetts, in 1788, and after graduating at Brown University, and taking a special course at Andover Theological senthe support of the London Missionary Society, he sailed for Asia on the nineteenth of February, 1812 Teeks before, he had married Ann Haseltine, who consented to share his work, and who sailed with hie, they had amas of their faith, and they became convinced that the baptism of the New Testament was immersion, and in accordance with this view, both of the Calcutta But this change of faith cut them off from the body which had sent them to India, and it was not until 1814 that the Baptists of America took the two missionaries under their care
Meanwhile, Dr JudsonBefore long, he baptized his first convert, and pushed forward the ith renewed zeal, translating the gospels into Bur the overnment had never been friendly, and in 1824, seized the missionaries and threw the with foul air, without light, and were loaded with fetters Just enough food was given them to keep them alive, and at last, stripped al sun, to another prison, where it was intended to burn them alive They were saved by the intercession of Sir Archibald Campbell, but Mrs Judson's health had been wrecked by the terrible experience She never recovered, dying two years later Undaunted by difficulties, Dr Judson continued his work, co over India, corammar and dictionary, but his labors at last undermined even his constitution and he died at sea in 1850, while on his way to the Isle of France
Turnto Lucretia Mott, one of the most extraordinary women who ever lived in Ahter of a sea-captain named Thomas Coffin, she was raised in the strict Quaker faith, to which her parents belonged She began teaching while still a girl, and at the age of eighteen,after that, that she developed the ”gift” of speaking at the Quaker s, simply, earnestly and eloquently The Quakers had always opposed slavery and Lucretia Mott was soon working heart and soul against it When the Aanized in 1833, she was one of four woanize the Feanization of wo for a political purpose Years of abuse followed, for in those days anti-slavery lecturers were tarred and feathered, their honities heaped upon thehout all this, Mrs Mott never lost her serenity, and never suffered bodily injury On one occasion, the annualof the Anti-Slavery Society, in New York, was broken up by athat sohtened, Mrs Mott asked her escort to look after them
”But ill take care of you?” he asked
”This ly laid her hand upon the arm of one of the leaders of the h”