"Gifts of the Millionaire"

GIFTS OF THE MILLIONAIRE

Otautau Standard and Wallace County Chronicle, July 20,1909

[This article, incidentally, was originally published in The Illustrated London News on May 29, 1909, with the exception that the latter version in the ILN contains one more paragraph (at the end) than this version does.]



Philanthropy, as far as I can see, is rapidly becoming the recognisable mark of a wicked man. We have often sneered at the superstition and cowardice of the mediaeval barons who thought that giving lands to the Church would wipe out the memory of their raids or robberies; but modern capitalists seem to have exactly the same notion; with this not unimportant addition, that in the case of the capitalists the memory of the robberies is really wiped out. This, after all, seems to be the chief difference between the monks who took land and gave pardons and the charity organisers who take money and give praise; the difference is that the monks wrote down in their books and chronicles, "Received three hundred acres from a bad baron"; whereas the modern experts and editors record the three hundred acres and call him a good baron. Of late, however, I am happy to say some candid voices have been heard, about the corruption and cruelty of the men who are the pillars of public benevolence; and if such voices have been raised you may be sure that they have been severely rebuked. A gentleman, whom I take the opportunity to thank, has sent me, along with an interesting letter, the following extraordinary passage from an American leading article: "As often, as we make a virtuous attempt to regard that arduous golfer, Mr John D Rockefeller, as an undesirable citizen of the big northern republic, he does something so superbly humane that one must feel impelled to come down hastily from the seat of the scornful and censorious. The incredible octopus, pictured by a thousand fountain-pens, has just authorised the New York Association for improving the Condition of the Poor to open Junior Sea Breeze, the summer hospital for babies at Sixty-fourth Street and the Last River. For the last three summers Mr Rockefeller has maintained this hospital for children entirely at his own expense. He has donated the land used, and, in addition has spent between 20,000 and 25,000 dollars on the camp. Now, in all seriousness, we ask, what are you going to do with a man who comes to the help of the City-pale babies in this practical fashion and keeps the Recording Angel blotting out portions of his record with tears?"

For my part I should reply that the Recording Angel must be a person of extraordinary and ungovernable sensibility if he is moved to tears by an old gentleman whose income is some thousands a day setting aside to feed his own fame and vanity some of the thousands which he could not possibly use to feed himself. Mr Rockefeller must, in the nature of things, be drawing somewhat near to an examination in which I understand that he believes— an examination considerably more searching than that of the American law-courts; and if he had fifteen hundred years in front of him instead of fifteen, he could not even begin to eat, drink, and enjoy all his own money. If I kill an elephant, and the elephant, nearly kills me, so that I have only ten minutes to live, even if elephant is my favorite dish I do not think myself monstrously magnanimous if, after partaking heartily of the end of his trunk, I observe with my dying breath, that I do not propose to eat the rest. If I discover a mountainous continent at the age of ninety-nine (which does not seem very likely) I cannot think myself a hero because I allow some younger people to leap up the crags and dance upon the mountain crests, and am content myself with a comfortable arm-chair and a view of the scenery. Rockefeller cannot be said to give his wealth to other people; one can only say that he leaves it for other people. In order to give one must first have; and the multi-millionaire does not truly possess his margin-millions; he cannot touch them, enjoy them, or even imagine them. Rockefeller decides not to absorb the whole of his own wealth just as he decides, with the same generous self-abnegation, not to drink up the sea or use up all the heat of the sun.

Of course, it may be at once conceded that in the case of ordinary charitable donors, of otherwise worthy or colorless characters, there is no need at all to enter into this matter of motives. If I die worth millions (which again is only a hypothesis) and leave a huge legacy of pots of beer to all the people in workhouses- for that is the form of charity I should choose— then my motives might be considered to be my own affair. Granted that I had done good to other people's bodies (which Sir Victor Horeley, I fear, will hardly admit), it might be left to a higher tribunal whether I had done good to my own soul. But in the case of Rockefeller the motive is relevant, because his philanthropy is, as we have seen, offered as a defence or expiation of his alleged commercial methods. If we are to set that philanthropy as a virtue over against his vices, then we have a right to ask if it is really virtuous. The question is about his morality; the question is whether he got his millions by tyranny or fraud; whereas if I died worth millions, it would be quite self-evident that I could only have got them by mistake.

I confess that I object to this particular style in which the the millionaire is whitewashed. In the case of Mr Rockefeller it would, perhaps, be yet more correct to say that he is anointed with oil. But whatever metaphor we choose for this covering-up of his real features, there are very strong moral and practical objections to the process. People complain of the whitewashing of historical characters, but that does not matter very much, simply because they are historical characters. Nero is dead, like that other and less intelligent sovereign, Queen Anne. I do not mind people whitewashing King John any more than I mind them whitewashing an ugly old picture. But the relief or indifference which might possibly attend the whitewashing of King John Plantagenet does not by any means apply to the whitewashing of King John D. Rockefeller. To be whitewashed alive is a terrible fate, like being buried alive. You go forth a frightful spectre among your fellows; all decent people fly from you screaming- as, indeed, I am given to understand, they do from John D. Rockefeller. God forbid that we should say that there is no angel's tear of such monstrous and supernatural bigness that it could wipe out his errors; I can imagine nothing much short of Niagara that could wipe out my own. But when a man is dying rich because he has deliberately ruined numberless babies whom he has never seen, I am not impressed with the fact that he has taken a handful of money, as useless to him as pebbles, and thrown it to a few other babies whom he has never seen. I feel this to be a dangerous moral precedent for myself. Translated into terms of my own income, it meant that if I gave one beggar one glass of wine out of twelve dozen of good claret that little red wave would wash away all my sins. I cannot believe this.