August 19, 2025 • 31 mins
Dive into the insightful reflections of a prominent figure from the oil revolution of the 20th century. This compelling book embodies the essence of experience, as it chronicles the life of the second highest taxpayer in the U.S. during the 1920s. Though not included in the text, enjoy a glimpse of his wisdom through a poignant poem I was early taught to work as well as play, My life has been one long, happy holiday; Full of work and full of play- I dropped the worry on the way- And God was good to me every day. (Summary by sidhu177)
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter six of Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by
John D. Rockefeller. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox
recordings are in the public domain. For more information or
to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by William
(00:21):
tom Coe. Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by John D. Rockefeller,
Chapter six, The Difficult Art of Giving. It is no
doubt easy to write platitudes and generalities about the joys
of giving and the duty that one owes to one's
fellow men, and to put together again all the familiar
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phrases that have served for generations whenever the subject has
been taken up. I can hardly hope to succeed in
starting any new interest in this great subject, when gifted
writers have so often failed. Yet I confess I find
much more interest in it at this time than bring on,
as I have been doing about the affairs of business
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and trade. It is most difficult, however, to dwell upon
a very practical and businesslike side of benefactions, generally without
seeming to ignore, or at least to fail to appreciate
fully the spirit of giving, which has its source in
the heart, and which of course makes it all worth while.
In this country we have come to the period when
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we can well afford to ask the ablest men to
devote more of their time, thought, and money to the
public well being. I am not so presumptuous as to
attempt to define exactly what this betterment work should consist of.
Every man will do that for himself, and his own
conclusion will be final for himself. It is well I
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think that no narrow or preconceived plan should be set
down as the best. I am sure it is a
mistake to assume that the possession of money in great
abundance necessarily brings happiness. The very rich are just like
all the rest of us, and if they get pleasure
from the possession of money, it comes from their ability
to do things which give satisfaction to someone besides themselves.
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Limitations of the rich. The mere expenditure of money for things,
so I am told by those who profess to know,
soon palls upon one. The novelty of being able to
purchase anything one wants soon passes, because what people most
seek cannot be bought with money. These rich men we
read about in the newspapers cannot get personal returns beyond
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a well defined limit for their expenditure. 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
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without involving them in more pain than pleasure. As I
still sty 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. A man of business may often most properly
consider that he does his share in building up a
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property which gives steady work for few or many people,
and his contribution consists in giving to his employees good
working conditions, new opportunities, and a strong stimulus to good work.
Just so long as he has the welfare of his
employees in his mind and follows his convictions, no one
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can help honoring such a man. It would be the
narrowest sort of view to take and I think the
meanest to consider that good works consist chiefly in the
outright giving of money. The best philanthropy, the best philanthropy,
the help that does the most good and the least harm,
the help that nourishes civilization at its root, that most
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widely disseminates health, righteousness, and happiness. Is not what is
usually called charity. It is, in my judgment, the investment
of effort or time or money carefully considered with relation
to the power of employing people at a remunerative wage,
to expand and develop the resources at hand, and to
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give opportunity for progress and healthful labor where it did
not exist before. No mere money giving is comparable to
this in its lasting and beneficial results. If, as I
am accustomed to think, this statement is a correct one,
how vast indeed is a philanthropic field. It may be
urged that the daily vocation of life is one thing,
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and the work of philanthropy quite another. I have no
sympathy with this notion. The man who plans to do
all his giving on Sunday is a poor prop for
the institutions of the country. The excuse for referring so
often to the busy man of affairs is that his
help is most needed. I know of men who have
followed out this large plan of developing work, not as
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a temporary matter, but as a permanent principle. These men
have taken up doubtful enterprises and carried them through to success,
often at great risk and in the face of great skepticism,
not as a matter only of professional profit, but in
the larger spirit of general uplift, disinterest, the service the
road to success. If I were to give advice to
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a young man starting out in life, I should say
this to him. If you aim for a large, broad
gaged success, do not begin your business career, whether you
sell your labor or are an independent producer, with the
idea of getting from the world by hook or crook,
all you can in the choice of your profession or
your business employment. Let your first thought be where can
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I fit in so that I may be most effective
in the work of the world. Where can I lend
a hand in a way most effectively to advance the
general interests and to life in such a spirit? Choose
your vocation in that way, and you have taken the
first step on the highest road to a large success.
Investigation will show that the great fortunes which have been
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made in this country, and the same as probably true
of other lands, have come to men who have performed
great and far reaching economic services, men who, with great
faith in the future of their country, have done most
for the development of its resources. The man will be
most successful who confers the greatest service on the world.
Commercial enterprises that are needed by the public will pay.
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Commercial enterprises that are not needed fail and ought to fail.
On the other hand, the one thing which such a
business philosopher would be most careful to avoid in his
investments of time and effort or money is the unnecessary
duplication of existing industries. He would regard all money spent
in increasing needless competition as wasted and worse. The man
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who puts up a second factory, when the factory in
existence will supply the public demand adequately and cheaply, is
wasting the national wealth and destroying the national prosperity, taking
the bread from the laborer, and unnecessarily introducing heartache and
misery into the world. Probably the greatest single obstacle to
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the progress and happiness of the American people lies in
the willingness of so many men to invest their time
and money in multiplying competitive industries, instead of opening up
new fields and putting their money into lines of industry
and development that are needed. It requires a better type
of mind to seek out and to support or to
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create the new, than to follow the worn paths of
accepted success. But here is the great chance in our
still rapidly developing country. The penalty of a selfish attempt
to make the world confer a living without contributing to
the progress or happiness of mankind is generally a failure
to the individual. The pity is that when he goes down,
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he inflicts heartache and misery also on others who are
in no way responsible the generosity of service. Probably the
most generous people in the world are the very poor,
who assume each other's burdens in the crises which comes
so often to the hard pressed. The mother in the
tenement falls ill, and the neighbor in the next room
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assumes her burdens. The father loses his work, and neighbors
supply food to his children from their own scanty store.
How often one hears of cases where the orphans are
taken over and brought up by the poor friend, whose
benefaction means great additional hardship. This sort of genuine service
makes the most princely gift from superabundance look insignificant. Indeed,
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the Jews have had for centuries a precept that one
tenth of a man's possessions must be devoted to good works.
But even this measure of giving is but a rough
yardstick to go by. To give a tenth of one's
income is well nigh and impossibility to some, while to
others it means a miserable pittance. If the spirit is there,
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the matter of proportion is soon lost sight of. It
is only the spirit of giving that counts, and the
very poor give without any self consciousness. But I fear
that I am dealing with generalities again. The education of
children in my early days may have been straight laced,
Yet I have always been thankful that the custom was
quite general to teach young people to give systematically of
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money that they themselves had earned. It is a good
thing to lead children to realize early the importance of
their obligations to others. But I confess it is increasingly difficult.
For what were luxuries then have become commonplaces now. It
should be a greater pleasure and satisfaction to give money
for a good cause than to earn it. And I
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have always indulged the hope that during my life I
should be able to help establish efficiency in giving, so
that wealth may be of greater used to the present
and future generations. Perhaps just here lies a difference between
the gifts of money and of service. The poor meet
promptly the misfortunes which confront the home circle and household
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of the neighbor. The giver of money, if his contribution
is to be valuable, must add service in the way
of study, and he must help to attack and improve
underlying conditions, not being so pressed by the racking necessities.
It is he that should be better able to attack
the subject from a more specific standpoint. But the final
analysis is the same. His money is a feeble offering
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without the study behind it which will make its expenditure effective.
Great hospitals, conducted by noble and unselfish men and women
are doing wonderful work. But no less important are the
achievements in research that reveal hitherto unknown facts about diseases
and provide the remedies by which many of them can
be relieved or even stamped out. To help the sick
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and distressed appeals to the kind hearted always, but to
help the investigator, who is striving successfully to attack the
causes which bring about sickness and distress, does not so
strongly attract the giver of money. The first appeals to
the sentiments overpoweringly, but the second has the head to
deal with. Yet, I am sure we are making wonderful
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advances in this field of scientific giving all over the world.
The need of dealing with the questions of philanthropy with
something beyond the impulses of emotion is evident, and everywhere
help is being given to those heroic men and women
who are devoting themselves to the practical and essentially scientific tasks.
It is a good and inspiring thing to recall occasionally
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the heroism, for example, of the men who risk and
sacrificed their lives to discover the facts about yellow fever,
a sacrifice for which untold generations will bless them. And
this same spirit has animated the professions of medicine and
surgery scientific research. How far may this spirit of sacrifice
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properly extend? A great number of scientific men every year
give up everything to arrive at some helpful contribution to
the sum of human knowledge. And I have sometimes thought
that good people who lightly and freely criticize their actions
scarcely realize just what such criticism means. It is one
thing to stand on the comfortable ground of placid inaction
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and put forth words of cynical wisdom, and another to
plunge into the work itself, and, through strenuous experience, earn
the right to express strong conclusions. For my own part,
I have stood so much as a placid onlooker that
I have not had the hardihood even to suggest how
people so much more experienced and wise in those things
than I should work out the details, even of those
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plans with which I have had the honor to be associated.
There has been a good deal of criticism, no doubt,
sincere of experiments on living dumb animals, and the person
who stands for the defenseless animal has such an overwhelming
appeal to the emotions that it is perhaps useless to
allude to the other side of the controversy. Doctor Simon
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Flexner of the Institute for Medical Research has had to
face exaggerated and even sensational reports which have no basis
of truth whatever, but considered for a moment what has
been accomplished recently under the direction of doctor Flexner in
discovering a remedy for epidemic cerebro spinal meningitis. It is
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true that in discovering this cure, the lives of perhaps
fifteen animals were sacrificed, as I learned, most of them monkeys.
But for each one of these animals which lost its life,
already scores of human lives have been saved. Large hearted
men like doctor Flexner and his associates do not permit
unnecessary pain to defenseless animals. I have been deeply interested
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in the story of a desperate experiment to save a
child's life, told in a letter by one of my
associates soon after the event described, and it seems worthy
of repeating. Doctor Alexis Carroll has been associated with doctor
Flexner and his work, and his wonderful skill has been
the result of his experiments and experiences a wonderful surgical operation.
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Doctor Alexis Carroll, one of the institute's staff, has been
making some interesting studies in experimental surgery and as successfully
transplanted organs from one animal to another and blood vessels
from one species to another. He had the opportunity recently
of applying the skill thus acquired to the saving of
a human life under circumstances, which attracted great interest among
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the medical fraternity of this city. One of the best
known of the younger surgeons in New York had a
child born early last March, which developed a disease in
which the blood, for some reason exchudes from the blood
vessels into the tissues of the body, and ordinarily the
child dies of this internal health. When this child was
five days old, it was evident that it was dying.
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The father and his brother, who is one of the
most distinguished men in the profession, and one or two
other doctors, were in consultation with reference to it, but
considered the case entirely hopeless. It so happened that the
father had been impressed with the work which doctor Carroll
had been doing at the institute, and had spent several
days with him studying his methods. He became convinced that
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the only possibility of saving the child's life was by
the direct transfusion of blood. While this has been done
between adults, the blood vessels of a young infant are
so delicate that it seemed impossible that the operation could
be successfully carried on. It is necessary not only that
the blood vessels of the two persons should be united together,
but it must be done in such a way that
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the interior lining of the vessels, which is a smooth,
shiny tissue, should be continuous. If the blood comes in
contact with the muscular coat of the blood vessels, it
will clot and stopped the circulation. Fortunately, doctor Carroll had
been experimenting on the blood vessels of some very young animals,
and the father was convinced that if any man in
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the country could perform the operation successfully, it would be he.
It was then the middle of the night, but doctor
Carroll was called on, and when the situation was explained
to him and it was made clear that the child
would die anyhow, he readily consented to attempt the operation,
although expressing very slight hope of its successful outcome. The
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father offered himself as the person whose blood should be
furnished to the child. It was impossible to give anesthetics
to either of them at a child of that age.
There was only one vein large enough to be used,
and that is in the back of the leg and
deep seated. A prominent surgeon who was present, exposed this vein.
He said afterward that there was no sign of life
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in the child, and expressed the belief that the child
had been to all intents and purposes dead for ten minutes.
In view of its condition, he raised the question whether
it was worth while to proceed further with the attempt.
The father, however, insisted upon going on, and the surgeon
then exposed the radial artery in the surgeon's wrist and
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was obliged to dissect it back about six inches in
order to pull it out far enough to make the
connection with the child's vein. This part of the work
the surgeon who did it afterward described as the blacksmith
part of the job. He said that the child's vein
was about the size of a match and the consistency
of wet cigarette paper, and it seemed utterly impossible for
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anyone to successfully unite these two vessels. Doctor Carroll, however,
accomplished this feat and then occurred with the doctors who
were present, described as one of the most dramatic incidents
in the history of surgery. The blood from the father's
artery was released and began to flow into the child's body.
Amounting to about a pint. The first sign of life
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was a little pink tinge at the top of one
of the ears. Then the lips, which had become perfectly blue,
began to change to red. And then suddenly, as though
the child had been taken from a hot mustard bath,
a pink glow broke out all over its body, and
it began to cry lustily. After about eight minutes, the
two were separated. The child at that time was crying
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for food. It was fed, and from that moment began
to eat and sleep regularly, and made a complete recovery.
The father appeared before a legislative committee at Albany an
opposition to certain bills which were pending at the last
session to restrict animal experimentation, and told this incident, and
said at the close that when he saw doctor Carroll's experiments,
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he had no idea that they would so soon be
available for saving human life, much less he imagined that
the life to be saved would be that of his
own child. The fundamental things in all help. If the
people can be educated to help themselves, we strike at
the root of many of the evils of the world.
This is the fundamental thing, and it is worth saying,
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even if it has been said so often that its
truth is lost sight of in its constant repetition. The
only thing which is of lasting benefit to a man
is that which he does for himself. Money which comes
to him without effort on his part is seldom a benefit,
and often a curse. This is the principal objection to speculation.
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It is not because more lose than gain, though that
is true, but it is because those who gain are
apt to receive more injury from their success than they
would have received from failure. And so with regard to
money or other things which are given by one person
to another, it is only in the exceptional case that
the receiver is really benefited. But if we can help
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people who help themselves, then there is a permanent blessing conferred.
Men who are studying the problem of disease tell us
that it is becoming more and more evident that the
forces which conquer sickness are within the body itself, and
that it is only when these are reduced below the
normal that disease can get a foothold. The way to
ward off disease, therefore, is to tone up the body generally,
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and when disease has secured a foothold. The way to
combat it is to help these natural resisting agencies which
are in the body already. In the same way, the
failures which a man makes in his life are due
almost always to some defect in his personality, some weakness
of body or mind, or character, will or temperament. The
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only way to overcome these failings is to build up
his personality from within, so that he, by virtue of
what is within him, may overcome the weakness which was
the cause of the failure. It is only those efforts
the man himself puts forth that can really help him.
We all desire to see the widest possible distribution of
the blessings of life. Many crude plans have been suggested,
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some of which utterly ignore the essential facts of human nature,
and if carried out, would perhaps drag our whole civilization
down into hopeless misery. It is my belief that the
principal cause for the economic differences between people is their
difference in personality, and that it is only as we
can assist in the wider distribution of those qualities which
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go to make up a strong personality, that we can
assist in the wider distribution of wealth. Under normal conditions,
the man who is strong in body, in mind, in character,
and in will need never suffer want. But these qualities
can never be developed in a man unless by his
own efforts. And the most that any other can do
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for him is, as I have said, to help him
to help himself. We must always remember that there is
not enough money for the work of the human uplift,
and that there never can be, how vitally important. It
is therefore that the expenditure should go as far as
possible and be used with the greatest intelligence. I have
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been frank to say that I believe in the spirit
of cond mberanation and co operation when properly and fairly
conducted in the world of commercial affairs, on the principle
that it helps to reduce waste, and waste is a
dissipation of power. I sincerely hope and thoroughly believe that
the same principle will eventually prevail in the art of giving,
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as it does in business. It is not merely the
tendency of the times developed by more exacting conditions in industry,
but it should make its most effective appeal to the
hearts of the people who are striving to do the
most good to the largest number some underlying principles at
the risk of making this chapter very dull. And I
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am told that this is a fault which inexperienced authors
should avoid at all hazards. I may perhaps be pardoned
if I set down here some of the fundamental principles
which have been at the bottom of all my own plans.
I have undertaken no work of any importance for many
years which in a general way, has not followed out
these broad lines. And I believe no really constructive of
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effort can be made in philanthropic work without such a
well defined and consecutive purpose. My own conversion to the
feeling that an organized plan was an absolute necessity came
about in this way about the year eighteen ninety. I
was still following the haphazard fashion of giving here and there.
As appeals presented themselves, I investigated as I could, and
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worked myself almost to a nervous break down and groping
my way without sufficient guide or chart through this ever
widening field of philanthropic endeavor. There was then forced upon
me the necessity to organize and plan this department of
our daily tasks on as distinct lines of progress as
we did our business affairs, and I will try to
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describe the underlying principles we arrived at and have since
followed out and hope still greatly to extend. It may
be beyond the pale of good taste to speak at
all of such a personal subject. I am not unmindful
of this, but I can make these observations with at
least a little better grace, because so much of the
hard work and hard thinking are done by my family
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and associates, who devote their lives to it. Every right
minded man has a philosophy of life, whether he knows
it or not. Hidden away in his mind are certain
governing principles, whether he formulates them in words or not,
which govern his life. Surely his ideal ought to be
to contribute all that he can, however little it may be,
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whether of money or service, to human progress. Certainly one's
ideal should be to use one's means, both in one's
investments and in benefactions, for the advancement of civilization. But
the question as to what civilization is and what are
the great laws which govern its advance, have been seriously studied.
Our investments not less than gifts have been directed to
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such ends as we have thought would tend to produce
these results. If you were to go into our office
and ask our Committee un benevol Lens or our Committee
on Investment in what they consider civilization to consist, they
would say that they have found in their study that
the most convenient analysis of the elements which go to
make up civilization runs about as follows. First progress in
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the means of subsistence, that is to say, progress in
abundance and variety of food, supply, clothing, shelter, sanitation, public health, commerce, manufacture,
the growth of the public wealth, et cetera. Second progress
in government and law, that is to say, in the
enactment of laws securing justice and equity to every man
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consistent with the largest individual liberty, and the due and
orderly enforcement of the same upon all. Third progress in
literature and language. Fourth progress in science and philosophy, Fifth
progress in art and refinement. Sixth progress in morality and religion.
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If you were to ask them, as indeed they are
very often asked, which of these they regard as fundamental,
they would reply that they would not attempt to answer.
That the question is purely an academic one that all
these go hand in hand, but that historically the first
of them, namely progress and means of subsistence, had generally
preceded progress in government, in literature, in knowledge, in refinement,
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and in religion. Though not itself of the highest importance,
it is the foundation upon which the whole superstructure of
civilization is built, and without which it could not exist. Accordingly,
we have sought, so far as we could, to make
investments in such a way as will tend to multiply,
to cheapen, and to diffuse as universally as possible the
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comforts of life. We claim no credit for preferring these
lines of investment. We make no sacrifices. These are the
lines of largest and surest return. In this particular, namely
in cheapness of acquirement and universality of means of subsistence,
our country easily surpasses that of any other in the world,
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though we are behind other countries, perhaps in most of
the others. It may be asked, how is it consistent
with the universal diffusion of these blessings that vast sums
of money should be in single hands. The reply is,
as I see it, that while men of wealth control
great sums of money. They do not and cannot use
them for themselves. They have indeed the legal title to
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large properties, and they do control the investment of them,
but this is as far as their own relation to
them extends or can extend. The money is universally diffused
in the sense that it is kept invested, and it
passes into the pay envelope week by week. Up to
the present time, no scheme has yet presented itself which
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seems to afford a better method of handling capital than
that of individual ownership. We might put our money into
the treasury of the nation and of the various states.
But we do not find any promise in the national
or state legislatures, viewed from the experiences of the past,
that the funds would be expended for the general weal
more effectively than under the present methods. Nor do we
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find in any of the schemes of socialism a promise
that wealth would be more wisely administered for the general good.
It is the duty of men of means to maintain
the title to their property and to administer their funds,
until some man or body of men shall rise up
capable of administering for the general good. The capital of
the country better than they can the next four elements
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of progress mentioned in the enumeration above, namely progress in
government and law, in language and literature, in science and philosophy,
in art and refinement. We for ourselves have thought to
be best promoted by means of the higher education, and
accordingly we have had the great satisfaction of putting such
sums as we could into various forms of education in
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our own and in foreign lands, and education not merely
along the lines of disseminating more generally the known, but
quite as much, and perhaps even more in promoting original investigation.
An individual institution of learning can have only a narrow sphere,
it can reach only a limited number of people. But
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every new fact discovered, every widening of the boundaries of
human knowledge by research, becomes universally known to all institutions
of learning, and becomes a benefaction at once to the
whole race. Quite as interesting as any phase of the
work have been the new lines entered upon by our committee.
We have not been satisfied with giving to causes which
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have appealed to us. We have felt that the mere
fact that this or the other cause makes its appeal
is no reason why we should give to it any
more than to a thousand other causes, perhaps more worthy,
which did not happen to have come under our eye.
The mere fact of a personal appeal creates no claim
which did not exist before, and no preference over other
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causes more worthy, which may not have made their appeal.
So this little committee of ours has not been content
to let the benevolences drift into the channels of mere convenience,
to give to the institutions which have sought aid, and
to neglect others. This department has studied the field of
human progress and sought to contribute to each of those
elements which we believe tend most to promote it. Where
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it has not found organization ready to its hand for
such purpose, the members of the Committee have sought to
create them. We are still working anew and I hope
expanding lines which make large demands on one's intelligence and study.
The so called betterment work, which has always been to
me a source of great interest, had a great influence
on my life, and I refer to it here because
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I wish to urge in this connection the great importance
of a father's keeping in close touch with its children,
taking into his confidence, the girls as well as the boys,
who in this way learn by ceasing and doing, and
have their part in the family responsibilities. As my father
taught me, so I have tried to teach my children
for years. It was our custom to read at the
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table the letters we received, affecting the various benevolences with
which we had to do, studying the requests made for
worthy purposes, and following the history and reports of institutions
and philanthropic cases in which we were interested. End of
Chapter six. Recording by William tom Coe
Chapter six of Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by
John D. Rockefeller. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox
recordings are in the public domain. For more information or
to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by William
(00:21):
tom Coe. Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by John D. Rockefeller,
Chapter six, The Difficult Art of Giving. It is no
doubt easy to write platitudes and generalities about the joys
of giving and the duty that one owes to one's
fellow men, and to put together again all the familiar
(00:43):
phrases that have served for generations whenever the subject has
been taken up. I can hardly hope to succeed in
starting any new interest in this great subject, when gifted
writers have so often failed. Yet I confess I find
much more interest in it at this time than bring on,
as I have been doing about the affairs of business
(01:04):
and trade. It is most difficult, however, to dwell upon
a very practical and businesslike side of benefactions, generally without
seeming to ignore, or at least to fail to appreciate
fully the spirit of giving, which has its source in
the heart, and which of course makes it all worth while.
In this country we have come to the period when
(01:25):
we can well afford to ask the ablest men to
devote more of their time, thought, and money to the
public well being. I am not so presumptuous as to
attempt to define exactly what this betterment work should consist of.
Every man will do that for himself, and his own
conclusion will be final for himself. It is well I
(01:46):
think that no narrow or preconceived plan should be set
down as the best. I am sure it is a
mistake to assume that the possession of money in great
abundance necessarily brings happiness. The very rich are just like
all the rest of us, and if they get pleasure
from the possession of money, it comes from their ability
to do things which give satisfaction to someone besides themselves.
(02:11):
Limitations of the rich. The mere expenditure of money for things,
so I am told by those who profess to know,
soon palls upon one. The novelty of being able to
purchase anything one wants soon passes, because what people most
seek cannot be bought with money. These rich men we
read about in the newspapers cannot get personal returns beyond
(02:34):
a well defined limit for their expenditure. 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
(02:55):
without involving them in more pain than pleasure. As I
still sty 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. A man of business may often most properly
consider that he does his share in building up a
(03:18):
property which gives steady work for few or many people,
and his contribution consists in giving to his employees good
working conditions, new opportunities, and a strong stimulus to good work.
Just so long as he has the welfare of his
employees in his mind and follows his convictions, no one
(03:38):
can help honoring such a man. It would be the
narrowest sort of view to take and I think the
meanest to consider that good works consist chiefly in the
outright giving of money. The best philanthropy, the best philanthropy,
the help that does the most good and the least harm,
the help that nourishes civilization at its root, that most
(04:01):
widely disseminates health, righteousness, and happiness. Is not what is
usually called charity. It is, in my judgment, the investment
of effort or time or money carefully considered with relation
to the power of employing people at a remunerative wage,
to expand and develop the resources at hand, and to
(04:22):
give opportunity for progress and healthful labor where it did
not exist before. No mere money giving is comparable to
this in its lasting and beneficial results. If, as I
am accustomed to think, this statement is a correct one,
how vast indeed is a philanthropic field. It may be
urged that the daily vocation of life is one thing,
(04:44):
and the work of philanthropy quite another. I have no
sympathy with this notion. The man who plans to do
all his giving on Sunday is a poor prop for
the institutions of the country. The excuse for referring so
often to the busy man of affairs is that his
help is most needed. I know of men who have
followed out this large plan of developing work, not as
(05:06):
a temporary matter, but as a permanent principle. These men
have taken up doubtful enterprises and carried them through to success,
often at great risk and in the face of great skepticism,
not as a matter only of professional profit, but in
the larger spirit of general uplift, disinterest, the service the
road to success. If I were to give advice to
(05:28):
a young man starting out in life, I should say
this to him. If you aim for a large, broad
gaged success, do not begin your business career, whether you
sell your labor or are an independent producer, with the
idea of getting from the world by hook or crook,
all you can in the choice of your profession or
your business employment. Let your first thought be where can
(05:51):
I fit in so that I may be most effective
in the work of the world. Where can I lend
a hand in a way most effectively to advance the
general interests and to life in such a spirit? Choose
your vocation in that way, and you have taken the
first step on the highest road to a large success.
Investigation will show that the great fortunes which have been
(06:13):
made in this country, and the same as probably true
of other lands, have come to men who have performed
great and far reaching economic services, men who, with great
faith in the future of their country, have done most
for the development of its resources. The man will be
most successful who confers the greatest service on the world.
Commercial enterprises that are needed by the public will pay.
(06:36):
Commercial enterprises that are not needed fail and ought to fail.
On the other hand, the one thing which such a
business philosopher would be most careful to avoid in his
investments of time and effort or money is the unnecessary
duplication of existing industries. He would regard all money spent
in increasing needless competition as wasted and worse. The man
(07:00):
who puts up a second factory, when the factory in
existence will supply the public demand adequately and cheaply, is
wasting the national wealth and destroying the national prosperity, taking
the bread from the laborer, and unnecessarily introducing heartache and
misery into the world. Probably the greatest single obstacle to
(07:20):
the progress and happiness of the American people lies in
the willingness of so many men to invest their time
and money in multiplying competitive industries, instead of opening up
new fields and putting their money into lines of industry
and development that are needed. It requires a better type
of mind to seek out and to support or to
(07:40):
create the new, than to follow the worn paths of
accepted success. But here is the great chance in our
still rapidly developing country. The penalty of a selfish attempt
to make the world confer a living without contributing to
the progress or happiness of mankind is generally a failure
to the individual. The pity is that when he goes down,
(08:03):
he inflicts heartache and misery also on others who are
in no way responsible the generosity of service. Probably the
most generous people in the world are the very poor,
who assume each other's burdens in the crises which comes
so often to the hard pressed. The mother in the
tenement falls ill, and the neighbor in the next room
(08:24):
assumes her burdens. The father loses his work, and neighbors
supply food to his children from their own scanty store.
How often one hears of cases where the orphans are
taken over and brought up by the poor friend, whose
benefaction means great additional hardship. This sort of genuine service
makes the most princely gift from superabundance look insignificant. Indeed,
(08:48):
the Jews have had for centuries a precept that one
tenth of a man's possessions must be devoted to good works.
But even this measure of giving is but a rough
yardstick to go by. To give a tenth of one's
income is well nigh and impossibility to some, while to
others it means a miserable pittance. If the spirit is there,
(09:08):
the matter of proportion is soon lost sight of. It
is only the spirit of giving that counts, and the
very poor give without any self consciousness. But I fear
that I am dealing with generalities again. The education of
children in my early days may have been straight laced,
Yet I have always been thankful that the custom was
quite general to teach young people to give systematically of
(09:31):
money that they themselves had earned. It is a good
thing to lead children to realize early the importance of
their obligations to others. But I confess it is increasingly difficult.
For what were luxuries then have become commonplaces now. It
should be a greater pleasure and satisfaction to give money
for a good cause than to earn it. And I
(09:52):
have always indulged the hope that during my life I
should be able to help establish efficiency in giving, so
that wealth may be of greater used to the present
and future generations. Perhaps just here lies a difference between
the gifts of money and of service. The poor meet
promptly the misfortunes which confront the home circle and household
(10:12):
of the neighbor. The giver of money, if his contribution
is to be valuable, must add service in the way
of study, and he must help to attack and improve
underlying conditions, not being so pressed by the racking necessities.
It is he that should be better able to attack
the subject from a more specific standpoint. But the final
analysis is the same. His money is a feeble offering
(10:36):
without the study behind it which will make its expenditure effective.
Great hospitals, conducted by noble and unselfish men and women
are doing wonderful work. But no less important are the
achievements in research that reveal hitherto unknown facts about diseases
and provide the remedies by which many of them can
be relieved or even stamped out. To help the sick
(10:58):
and distressed appeals to the kind hearted always, but to
help the investigator, who is striving successfully to attack the
causes which bring about sickness and distress, does not so
strongly attract the giver of money. The first appeals to
the sentiments overpoweringly, but the second has the head to
deal with. Yet, I am sure we are making wonderful
(11:19):
advances in this field of scientific giving all over the world.
The need of dealing with the questions of philanthropy with
something beyond the impulses of emotion is evident, and everywhere
help is being given to those heroic men and women
who are devoting themselves to the practical and essentially scientific tasks.
It is a good and inspiring thing to recall occasionally
(11:42):
the heroism, for example, of the men who risk and
sacrificed their lives to discover the facts about yellow fever,
a sacrifice for which untold generations will bless them. And
this same spirit has animated the professions of medicine and
surgery scientific research. How far may this spirit of sacrifice
(12:04):
properly extend? A great number of scientific men every year
give up everything to arrive at some helpful contribution to
the sum of human knowledge. And I have sometimes thought
that good people who lightly and freely criticize their actions
scarcely realize just what such criticism means. It is one
thing to stand on the comfortable ground of placid inaction
(12:26):
and put forth words of cynical wisdom, and another to
plunge into the work itself, and, through strenuous experience, earn
the right to express strong conclusions. For my own part,
I have stood so much as a placid onlooker that
I have not had the hardihood even to suggest how
people so much more experienced and wise in those things
than I should work out the details, even of those
(12:49):
plans with which I have had the honor to be associated.
There has been a good deal of criticism, no doubt,
sincere of experiments on living dumb animals, and the person
who stands for the defenseless animal has such an overwhelming
appeal to the emotions that it is perhaps useless to
allude to the other side of the controversy. Doctor Simon
(13:11):
Flexner of the Institute for Medical Research has had to
face exaggerated and even sensational reports which have no basis
of truth whatever, but considered for a moment what has
been accomplished recently under the direction of doctor Flexner in
discovering a remedy for epidemic cerebro spinal meningitis. It is
(13:31):
true that in discovering this cure, the lives of perhaps
fifteen animals were sacrificed, as I learned, most of them monkeys.
But for each one of these animals which lost its life,
already scores of human lives have been saved. Large hearted
men like doctor Flexner and his associates do not permit
unnecessary pain to defenseless animals. I have been deeply interested
(13:55):
in the story of a desperate experiment to save a
child's life, told in a letter by one of my
associates soon after the event described, and it seems worthy
of repeating. Doctor Alexis Carroll has been associated with doctor
Flexner and his work, and his wonderful skill has been
the result of his experiments and experiences a wonderful surgical operation.
(14:19):
Doctor Alexis Carroll, one of the institute's staff, has been
making some interesting studies in experimental surgery and as successfully
transplanted organs from one animal to another and blood vessels
from one species to another. He had the opportunity recently
of applying the skill thus acquired to the saving of
a human life under circumstances, which attracted great interest among
(14:42):
the medical fraternity of this city. One of the best
known of the younger surgeons in New York had a
child born early last March, which developed a disease in
which the blood, for some reason exchudes from the blood
vessels into the tissues of the body, and ordinarily the
child dies of this internal health. When this child was
five days old, it was evident that it was dying.
(15:05):
The father and his brother, who is one of the
most distinguished men in the profession, and one or two
other doctors, were in consultation with reference to it, but
considered the case entirely hopeless. It so happened that the
father had been impressed with the work which doctor Carroll
had been doing at the institute, and had spent several
days with him studying his methods. He became convinced that
(15:27):
the only possibility of saving the child's life was by
the direct transfusion of blood. While this has been done
between adults, the blood vessels of a young infant are
so delicate that it seemed impossible that the operation could
be successfully carried on. It is necessary not only that
the blood vessels of the two persons should be united together,
but it must be done in such a way that
(15:49):
the interior lining of the vessels, which is a smooth,
shiny tissue, should be continuous. If the blood comes in
contact with the muscular coat of the blood vessels, it
will clot and stopped the circulation. Fortunately, doctor Carroll had
been experimenting on the blood vessels of some very young animals,
and the father was convinced that if any man in
(16:10):
the country could perform the operation successfully, it would be he.
It was then the middle of the night, but doctor
Carroll was called on, and when the situation was explained
to him and it was made clear that the child
would die anyhow, he readily consented to attempt the operation,
although expressing very slight hope of its successful outcome. The
(16:32):
father offered himself as the person whose blood should be
furnished to the child. It was impossible to give anesthetics
to either of them at a child of that age.
There was only one vein large enough to be used,
and that is in the back of the leg and
deep seated. A prominent surgeon who was present, exposed this vein.
He said afterward that there was no sign of life
(16:53):
in the child, and expressed the belief that the child
had been to all intents and purposes dead for ten minutes.
In view of its condition, he raised the question whether
it was worth while to proceed further with the attempt.
The father, however, insisted upon going on, and the surgeon
then exposed the radial artery in the surgeon's wrist and
(17:13):
was obliged to dissect it back about six inches in
order to pull it out far enough to make the
connection with the child's vein. This part of the work
the surgeon who did it afterward described as the blacksmith
part of the job. He said that the child's vein
was about the size of a match and the consistency
of wet cigarette paper, and it seemed utterly impossible for
(17:34):
anyone to successfully unite these two vessels. Doctor Carroll, however,
accomplished this feat and then occurred with the doctors who
were present, described as one of the most dramatic incidents
in the history of surgery. The blood from the father's
artery was released and began to flow into the child's body.
Amounting to about a pint. The first sign of life
(17:56):
was a little pink tinge at the top of one
of the ears. Then the lips, which had become perfectly blue,
began to change to red. And then suddenly, as though
the child had been taken from a hot mustard bath,
a pink glow broke out all over its body, and
it began to cry lustily. After about eight minutes, the
two were separated. The child at that time was crying
(18:19):
for food. It was fed, and from that moment began
to eat and sleep regularly, and made a complete recovery.
The father appeared before a legislative committee at Albany an
opposition to certain bills which were pending at the last
session to restrict animal experimentation, and told this incident, and
said at the close that when he saw doctor Carroll's experiments,
(18:42):
he had no idea that they would so soon be
available for saving human life, much less he imagined that
the life to be saved would be that of his
own child. The fundamental things in all help. If the
people can be educated to help themselves, we strike at
the root of many of the evils of the world.
This is the fundamental thing, and it is worth saying,
(19:05):
even if it has been said so often that its
truth is lost sight of in its constant repetition. The
only thing which is of lasting benefit to a man
is that which he does for himself. Money which comes
to him without effort on his part is seldom a benefit,
and often a curse. This is the principal objection to speculation.
(19:25):
It is not because more lose than gain, though that
is true, but it is because those who gain are
apt to receive more injury from their success than they
would have received from failure. And so with regard to
money or other things which are given by one person
to another, it is only in the exceptional case that
the receiver is really benefited. But if we can help
(19:47):
people who help themselves, then there is a permanent blessing conferred.
Men who are studying the problem of disease tell us
that it is becoming more and more evident that the
forces which conquer sickness are within the body itself, and
that it is only when these are reduced below the
normal that disease can get a foothold. The way to
ward off disease, therefore, is to tone up the body generally,
(20:10):
and when disease has secured a foothold. The way to
combat it is to help these natural resisting agencies which
are in the body already. In the same way, the
failures which a man makes in his life are due
almost always to some defect in his personality, some weakness
of body or mind, or character, will or temperament. The
(20:31):
only way to overcome these failings is to build up
his personality from within, so that he, by virtue of
what is within him, may overcome the weakness which was
the cause of the failure. It is only those efforts
the man himself puts forth that can really help him.
We all desire to see the widest possible distribution of
the blessings of life. Many crude plans have been suggested,
(20:53):
some of which utterly ignore the essential facts of human nature,
and if carried out, would perhaps drag our whole civilization
down into hopeless misery. It is my belief that the
principal cause for the economic differences between people is their
difference in personality, and that it is only as we
can assist in the wider distribution of those qualities which
(21:15):
go to make up a strong personality, that we can
assist in the wider distribution of wealth. Under normal conditions,
the man who is strong in body, in mind, in character,
and in will need never suffer want. But these qualities
can never be developed in a man unless by his
own efforts. And the most that any other can do
(21:36):
for him is, as I have said, to help him
to help himself. We must always remember that there is
not enough money for the work of the human uplift,
and that there never can be, how vitally important. It
is therefore that the expenditure should go as far as
possible and be used with the greatest intelligence. I have
(21:57):
been frank to say that I believe in the spirit
of cond mberanation and co operation when properly and fairly
conducted in the world of commercial affairs, on the principle
that it helps to reduce waste, and waste is a
dissipation of power. I sincerely hope and thoroughly believe that
the same principle will eventually prevail in the art of giving,
(22:17):
as it does in business. It is not merely the
tendency of the times developed by more exacting conditions in industry,
but it should make its most effective appeal to the
hearts of the people who are striving to do the
most good to the largest number some underlying principles at
the risk of making this chapter very dull. And I
(22:38):
am told that this is a fault which inexperienced authors
should avoid at all hazards. I may perhaps be pardoned
if I set down here some of the fundamental principles
which have been at the bottom of all my own plans.
I have undertaken no work of any importance for many
years which in a general way, has not followed out
these broad lines. And I believe no really constructive of
(23:00):
effort can be made in philanthropic work without such a
well defined and consecutive purpose. My own conversion to the
feeling that an organized plan was an absolute necessity came
about in this way about the year eighteen ninety. I
was still following the haphazard fashion of giving here and there.
As appeals presented themselves, I investigated as I could, and
(23:25):
worked myself almost to a nervous break down and groping
my way without sufficient guide or chart through this ever
widening field of philanthropic endeavor. There was then forced upon
me the necessity to organize and plan this department of
our daily tasks on as distinct lines of progress as
we did our business affairs, and I will try to
(23:46):
describe the underlying principles we arrived at and have since
followed out and hope still greatly to extend. It may
be beyond the pale of good taste to speak at
all of such a personal subject. I am not unmindful
of this, but I can make these observations with at
least a little better grace, because so much of the
hard work and hard thinking are done by my family
(24:07):
and associates, who devote their lives to it. Every right
minded man has a philosophy of life, whether he knows
it or not. Hidden away in his mind are certain
governing principles, whether he formulates them in words or not,
which govern his life. Surely his ideal ought to be
to contribute all that he can, however little it may be,
(24:28):
whether of money or service, to human progress. Certainly one's
ideal should be to use one's means, both in one's
investments and in benefactions, for the advancement of civilization. But
the question as to what civilization is and what are
the great laws which govern its advance, have been seriously studied.
Our investments not less than gifts have been directed to
(24:51):
such ends as we have thought would tend to produce
these results. If you were to go into our office
and ask our Committee un benevol Lens or our Committee
on Investment in what they consider civilization to consist, they
would say that they have found in their study that
the most convenient analysis of the elements which go to
make up civilization runs about as follows. First progress in
(25:16):
the means of subsistence, that is to say, progress in
abundance and variety of food, supply, clothing, shelter, sanitation, public health, commerce, manufacture,
the growth of the public wealth, et cetera. Second progress
in government and law, that is to say, in the
enactment of laws securing justice and equity to every man
(25:38):
consistent with the largest individual liberty, and the due and
orderly enforcement of the same upon all. Third progress in
literature and language. Fourth progress in science and philosophy, Fifth
progress in art and refinement. Sixth progress in morality and religion.
(26:00):
If you were to ask them, as indeed they are
very often asked, which of these they regard as fundamental,
they would reply that they would not attempt to answer.
That the question is purely an academic one that all
these go hand in hand, but that historically the first
of them, namely progress and means of subsistence, had generally
preceded progress in government, in literature, in knowledge, in refinement,
(26:24):
and in religion. Though not itself of the highest importance,
it is the foundation upon which the whole superstructure of
civilization is built, and without which it could not exist. Accordingly,
we have sought, so far as we could, to make
investments in such a way as will tend to multiply,
to cheapen, and to diffuse as universally as possible the
(26:45):
comforts of life. We claim no credit for preferring these
lines of investment. We make no sacrifices. These are the
lines of largest and surest return. In this particular, namely
in cheapness of acquirement and universality of means of subsistence,
our country easily surpasses that of any other in the world,
(27:07):
though we are behind other countries, perhaps in most of
the others. It may be asked, how is it consistent
with the universal diffusion of these blessings that vast sums
of money should be in single hands. The reply is,
as I see it, that while men of wealth control
great sums of money. They do not and cannot use
them for themselves. They have indeed the legal title to
(27:30):
large properties, and they do control the investment of them,
but this is as far as their own relation to
them extends or can extend. The money is universally diffused
in the sense that it is kept invested, and it
passes into the pay envelope week by week. Up to
the present time, no scheme has yet presented itself which
(27:51):
seems to afford a better method of handling capital than
that of individual ownership. We might put our money into
the treasury of the nation and of the various states.
But we do not find any promise in the national
or state legislatures, viewed from the experiences of the past,
that the funds would be expended for the general weal
more effectively than under the present methods. Nor do we
(28:14):
find in any of the schemes of socialism a promise
that wealth would be more wisely administered for the general good.
It is the duty of men of means to maintain
the title to their property and to administer their funds,
until some man or body of men shall rise up
capable of administering for the general good. The capital of
the country better than they can the next four elements
(28:37):
of progress mentioned in the enumeration above, namely progress in
government and law, in language and literature, in science and philosophy,
in art and refinement. We for ourselves have thought to
be best promoted by means of the higher education, and
accordingly we have had the great satisfaction of putting such
sums as we could into various forms of education in
(29:00):
our own and in foreign lands, and education not merely
along the lines of disseminating more generally the known, but
quite as much, and perhaps even more in promoting original investigation.
An individual institution of learning can have only a narrow sphere,
it can reach only a limited number of people. But
(29:20):
every new fact discovered, every widening of the boundaries of
human knowledge by research, becomes universally known to all institutions
of learning, and becomes a benefaction at once to the
whole race. Quite as interesting as any phase of the
work have been the new lines entered upon by our committee.
We have not been satisfied with giving to causes which
(29:41):
have appealed to us. We have felt that the mere
fact that this or the other cause makes its appeal
is no reason why we should give to it any
more than to a thousand other causes, perhaps more worthy,
which did not happen to have come under our eye.
The mere fact of a personal appeal creates no claim
which did not exist before, and no preference over other
(30:03):
causes more worthy, which may not have made their appeal.
So this little committee of ours has not been content
to let the benevolences drift into the channels of mere convenience,
to give to the institutions which have sought aid, and
to neglect others. This department has studied the field of
human progress and sought to contribute to each of those
elements which we believe tend most to promote it. Where
(30:26):
it has not found organization ready to its hand for
such purpose, the members of the Committee have sought to
create them. We are still working anew and I hope
expanding lines which make large demands on one's intelligence and study.
The so called betterment work, which has always been to
me a source of great interest, had a great influence
on my life, and I refer to it here because
(30:49):
I wish to urge in this connection the great importance
of a father's keeping in close touch with its children,
taking into his confidence, the girls as well as the boys,
who in this way learn by ceasing and doing, and
have their part in the family responsibilities. As my father
taught me, so I have tried to teach my children
for years. It was our custom to read at the
(31:11):
table the letters we received, affecting the various benevolences with
which we had to do, studying the requests made for
worthy purposes, and following the history and reports of institutions
and philanthropic cases in which we were interested. End of
Chapter six. Recording by William tom Coe
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