Rockefeller Foundation

“ He is probably better material for civilization, because, if more vulgarized, [79] he is more intelligent. That he is happier is not so certain. The church inspired a confidence (not always justified) in the friendliness of destiny which the Rockefeller Foundation has so far failed to equal. Nevertheless, scientific philanthropy, though it promises less, achieves what it does promise more thoroughly and without those terrible by-products of the ecclesiastical system—servility, pauperism, bigotry, and superstition. ”

“ King is always intensely in love with whatever interests him. His enthusiasms are not so much on the surface for many people, as underneath for causes—and for a few men. Gifted with an uncommon capacity for absorbing impressions and collecting data for research, he has made himself a sort of pathological study to other people. In mastering economics he has himself been enthralled by his own enthusiasm.
At the time of Laurier's speech on democracy King was peculiarly enthusiastic about John D. Rockefeller, Jr., head of the Rockefeller Foundation. ”

“ Vincent was called to become head of the Rockefeller Foundation. Then came Marion LeRoy Burton, a former clergyman, and president of Smith College for young ladies, a “booster” from way back, an inspirationalist of the Chautauqua school; the university gave him a grand reception, with bands and torches. He said in the hearing of an acquaintance of mine that he was going to make Minnesota a gentleman’s school of the Yale type. What actually exists is a great academic department-store. ”

“ Prominent among those in the United States are The Carnegie Corporation and The Rockefeller Foundation, which are devoting hundreds of millions of dollars to the service of research, for the purpose of advancing science and directly benefiting humankind. The results play an important part in the protection and daily welfare of mankind. The Mellon Institute contributes much to the solution of problems of applied chemistry. [7] It is interesting to note how the investigation carried on by these and other foundations is contributing directly to human welfare by mastering disease. ”

“ Never was there such an opportunity as exists to-day for the industrial leader with clear vision and broad sympathy permanently to bridge the chasm that is daily gaping wider between the parties to industry, and to establish a solid foundation for industrial prosperity, social improvement, and national solidarity. ”

“ ROCKEFELLER BROTHERS FUND, 169
Rockefeller, David, 56; 123; 169
ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION, 4; 35; 39; 70; 131; 161; 164; 168
Rockefeller, John D., 3rd., 168 ff
Rockefeller, Laurence S., 169; 171
Rockefeller, Nelson A., 5; 134; 169
Rockefeller, Winthrop, 169
Roebling, Mary G., 131
Role of Private Enterprise in the Economic Development of Underdeveloped Nations (Dallas CED (pamphlet) ) , 79
Roosevelt, Eleanor, 143; 148
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 41; 55; 82; 110;
at Tehran Conference, 27;
at Yalta Conference, 30;
ideas on Berlin zoning, 31 ff;
policies of, 164 ”

“ The hope in the future lies in the perpetuation of this spirit, and unless increasingly it is made the foundation of the political, social, and industrial life of the world, there will not be permanent peace and good will among men, either nationally or internationally. ”

“ It would seem to be better and truer and more accurate in the tremendous crisis of our modern life to judge Mr. Rockefeller, not as monster of wickedness, but merely as an inefficient, morally underwitted man. There are things that he has not thought of that every one else has.
We see that in all those qualities that really go to make a great business house in a great nation John D. Rockefeller stands as the most colossal failure as yet that our American business life has produced. ”

“ Rockefeller is a strict Baptist, a regular attendant at church and prayer-meeting, a teacher in the Sunday-school and a staunch advocate of aggressive Christianity. His advancement to commanding wealth has not changed his ideas of duty and personal obligation. ”

“ Rockefeller's private charities have been almost numberless. He has aided young men and women through college, sometimes by gift and sometimes by loan. He has provided the means for persons who were ill to go abroad or elsewhere for rest. He does not forget, when his apples are gathered at Pocantico Hills, to send hundreds of barrels to the various charitable institutions in and near New York, or, when one of his workingmen dies, to continue the support to his family while it is needed. Some of us become too busy to think of the little ways of doing good. ”

“ Rockefeller's corporation for charity and public service is less original and less imposing than his business corporation. It is insignificant beside the Roman Catholic Church in the middle ages or beside what is now being done by every state for charity and education. Mr. Rockefeller's wealth would scarcely support the public schools of the country for a single year. None the less a corporation of this kind will for a time have considerable power and there is some reason to fear that it will not be wholly beneficial. ”

“ Rockefeller knows his goal and attains it, regardless of other moral worths. For these the way is certain. They can suffer no deflection since there are no relative values, no possible choices. Their purpose makes the road one-dimensional. ”

“ John D. Rockefeller is reputed to have an annual income equal to that of three or four foreign sovereigns; but his inalienable assets are in the universities he has endowed, the churches he has helped to build, the useful societies he has aided, and in the gold mines of public gratitude which he has opened up. ”

“ Rockefeller is still in middle life, with, it is hoped, many years before him in which to carry out his [Pg 382] great projects of benevolence. He is as modest and gentle in manner, as unostentatious and as kind in heart, as when he had no millions to give away. He is never harsh, seems to have complete self-control, and has not forgotten to be grateful to the men who befriended and trusted him in his early business life. ”

“ Rockefeller has been an example to the rich, and a friend and helper to the poor. Comparatively few men and women can be intrusted with millions, and make the best use of the money. With Mr. Rockefeller's married life thus happily and wisely begun, business activities went on as before, perchance with less wear of body and mind. ”

“ The true test of a man's charity is the sum which he reserves for himself; hence when Jno. D. Rockefeller—my good Baptist brother who's building collegiate monuments to his own memory with other people's money—reserves tens o' millions in excess of his needs and imagines himself full to the muzzle with the grace of God, he's simply chasing a rainbow that may land him in Malebolge with the dull sudden plunk of a Republican campaign promise hitting the tidal wave of prosperity. ”

“ His success may be attributed in part to industry, energy, economy, and good sense. He loved his work, and had the courage to battle with difficulties. He had steadiness of character, the ability to command the confidence of business men from the beginning, and gave close and careful attention to the matters intrusted to him.
Mr. Rockefeller will be remembered, not so much because he accumulated millions, but because he gave away millions, thereby doing great good, and setting a noble example. ”

“ With all these different lines of business, and being necessarily a very busy man, he never seems hurried or worried. His manner is always kindly and considerate. He is a good talker, an equally good listener, and gathers knowledge from every source. Meeting the best educators of the country, coming in contact with leading business and professional men as well, and having travelled abroad and in his own country, Mr. Rockefeller has become a man of wide and varied intelligence. ”

“ I would define goodness as doing what one would wish one had done in twenty years—twenty years, twenty days, twenty minutes, or twenty seconds, according to the time the action takes to get ripe.
It would be far more true and more to the point instead of scolding or admiring Mr. Rockefeller's skilled labour at getting too rich, to point out mildly that he has done something that in the long-run he would not have wanted to do; that he has lacked the social imagination for a great permanently successful business. ”

“ All human interests are mutual. John D. Rockefeller did not amass a fortune by making others poor. On the contrary, in the building up of his hundreds of millions, he increased the wealth of others by billions. ”

“ Rockefeller's millions seek after new knowledge and then help itself. Of course it might, but this attitude when looked into carefully is ridiculous. It is just as bad as for a citizen to depend on his generous neighbor's parlors to entertain his company. If a state would be a parasite and depend upon forces outside itself to develop new knowledge, then by the laws of nature it must take the chances of a parasite. But I believe that with a healthy, wealthy and vigorous body of people, state pride will forever demand that the state shall do its share toward productive scholarship. ”

“ Rockefeller lived within his means, and worked early and late, finding little or no time for recreation or amusements, but always time for his accustomed work in the church. There was always some person in sickness or sorrow to be visited, some child to be brought into the Sunday-school, or some stranger to be invited to the prayer-meetings. ”

“ You can do good in practical, material affairs and for the diminution of physical suffering. I wish every American would preach the gospel of the Rockefeller Institute all over the world: the creed of the open window, a crusade against vermin and microbes. That would bring us a ‘new’ world.
“I would like to see a closer union between the Red Cross and the Red Crescent. The Turks have not your organising ability; but they have many sound ideas already operating in their hospitals.
“We must be quite sure that our civilisation is perfect before we force it on others. ”

“ They exclude from their lives all that makes life worth living, that they may acquire innumerable specimens of a precious metal. Gold is their end, not the gratification it may bring. Mr Rockefeller will go out of the world as limited in intelligence, as uninstructed in mind, as he was when he entered it. The lessons of history and literature are lost upon him. The joys for which wise men strive have never been his. He is the richest man on earth, and his position and influence are the heaviest indictment of wealth that can be made. ”

“ Every step he takes up the ascent to riches gives him new perspectives and new points of view.
It may have appealed to the young Rockefeller, clerk in a Chicago house, that to be rich was itself a supreme end; in the first flush of the discovery that he was immensely rich, he may have thanked Heaven as if for a supreme good, and spoken to a Sunday-school gathering as if he knew himself for the most favoured of men. But all that happened twenty years ago or more. One does not keep on in that sort of satisfaction; one settles down to the new facts. And such men as Mr. ”

“ Rockefeller began to give very early in life, and for the last forty years has steadily increased his giving as his wealth has increased. Always reticent about his gifts, it is impossible to learn how much he has given or for what purposes. Of necessity some gifts become public, such as his latest to Vassar College of $100,000, a like amount to Rochester University and Theological Seminary, and the same, it is believed, to Spelman Seminary, at Atlanta, Ga., named as a memorial to his father-in-law. ”

“ ROCKEFELLER, JOHN DAVISON (1839–⁠) , American capitalist, was born in Richford, Tioga county, New York, on the 8th of July 1839. In 1853 his family removed to Ohio, living after 1857 in Cleveland, where Rockefeller had begun to work as a bookkeeper in 1855 and where in 1858 he went into the produce commission business. His firm, Clark & Rockefeller, in 1862 invested in an oil refinery, planned by Samuel Andrews, and in 1865 Rockefeller sold out his share to his partner Clark, bought for $72,500 a larger share in another refinery, and formed the partnership of Rockefeller & Andrews. ”

“ Many have detected in these habits of mind only the cheese-paring activities of a naturally narrow spirit. Rockefeller's old Cleveland associates remember him as the greatest bargainer they had ever known, as a man who had an eye for infinite details and an unquenchable patience and resource in making economies. Yet Rockefeller was clearly more than a pertinacious haggler over trifles. Certainly such a diagnosis does not explain a man who has built up one of the world's greatest organizations and accumulated the largest fortune which has ever been placed at the disposal of one man. ”

“ John D. Rockefeller (b. 1839) is a splendid example of those many and noble American millionaires who have responded with astonishing liberality to the promptings of their philanthropic natures. The reconstruction of the Chicago University, the founding or endowment of other public institutions, and of numerous charitable benefactions, together embracing the expenditure of many millions, are magnificent monuments to Mr. Rockefeller’s share in promoting the progress of his country during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. ”

“ Rockefeller reveal a rare combination of insight and energy in founding and consolidating a new industry which of itself is sufficient to account for success. In any case, we in England, looking back on our history, have no right to point the finger of reproach at our American kinsmen. There is indeed a cynical theory that our ruling classes are free from such reproach only because they have been sated with the wealth they have already gained. With us the struggle has long been decided; whereas in America the dust and heat of battle still blind the eyes of men. ”