The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-03-26
BEGGING LETTERS TO MILLION.
AIRES.
Few Reach Those for Whom They are
Intended.

Intended.
NEW YORK, March 24-New York
millionaires are overwhelmed with
begging letters. It is one of the
strangest facts in the daily experience of
busy and hard-headed financiers These
letters come from al! parts of the country,
and request the loan of from five to one
hundred thousand for every conceivable
purpose and the man who ''scorns to beg
! illustrates the interesting fact by
begging the largest sums. The Don
! Qulxotes or Ssncha Panzas who
| write these letters actually suppose
! that the mllionaires will not only grant
their astonishing demands, but will give
the matter personal attention. Some expe-
rlences of Russell Sage were recently cited
as instances of the amazing folly of the
! writers of begging letters, acting under the
! delu1lon that the age of miracles had re-
! turned, and that blood might be- pressed
from stone, though the nisapprehension
as TO Mr.. Sage's charitable inclnations is
due largely to reckless miSstatements sent
to number of out-of-town Journals to
! the effect that this frugal old gentleman.
! who, with more appropriateness than ele-
gance, has been termed the stump tailed
fox of Wall street, was actually studying
ways and means to give away a large part
of his enormous fortune in charity. If the
cha acter and the icy environment of great
mlllionaires We're generally known .they
would receive few letters from professional
sharpers and those phenomenally unsophis-
tlcated persons who write touching commu-
nlcatlons in perfect good faith. None of
these persons seem to know that every big
millionaire of Wall street has private sec
rotary, who looks over his letters every
morning, throws aside those appealing for
charity and lays before his employer only
those of strictly business nature; the
average private secretary would not dare
to do otherwise. To mark these begging
letters 'private" and personal" is useless.
A secretary who would lay begging
letters before his master would be
coldly rebuked for annoying him. He is
expected to make his employers mail as
little burdensome as possible. But think of
appealing for charity to Russell Sage one
of the heroes of the Kansas Pacific trust
transaction, and who thereby narrowly
escaped a criminal indictment, eluding the
grip of the penal law only by
pleading the statute of limitations.
His life has been devoted simply
to money making from the time when
he was storekeeper N Troy to the present,
when he is understood to have accumulated
$4,000, 600, Midas store of gold held with
the clutch of miser, who would fain,
when he can no longer use it here, make a
freight contract with old Charon the SOM
bre boatman, to ferry it across the Styx
to Sage elysium of sure profits and count
less dollars
Jay Gould occasionally subscribes to
charitable objects, but begging letters sent
to him are so much fuel for the fire. He
would never see them. When it is known
that he is to take a cruise in his yacht he
sometimes receives very suggestive letters
from adventureSses, which used to be the
subject of light banter from Washington
+. Conner and Signor Morrisini,
his former partners, and the
usually taciturn financier would
smile at their sallies, well knowing that
they recognized the correctness of his pr-
waite life. Mr.. Gould however unscrupu
lous as financier, is'not considered small
minded enough to be stingy, but he has
neither the time nor the disposition to re-
spond to begging letters. He piles up his
millions as general would col
lect powder, shot and SHE'LL arms
and heavy ordnance, for his cam
paigns. He wants them in order to extend
his power. He is an impassive engine of
finance, with steam always up for the work
of railroad conquest He has as much re.
gard for obstacles in his way as a locomo-
tive. The sending of a begging letter to
such man might well be considered evil
dence OF disordered mind
Young George Gould, the heir to many
millions, is considered close. Cornelius
Vanderbilt, the head of the Vanderbilt fam
lily, INDUCES in very moderate charities.
Seekers for aid need not presume upon the
fact that he is religious man. He knows
how to keep firm grip on his money. He,
moreover, aids and abets the schemes of the
live stock ring through marked discrimi-
nation in freight rates against shipments of
dressed beef, whereby the cost of meat,
and thus the cost of living, is
materially increased, the poor
suffering accordingly. He has con-
tributed something to promote
the interests of the operatives of the
Vanderbilt system, at New York, but is no
more a Peabody or a Howard than as if he
were not the pet of sycophantic and fash
ionable clergymen of New York, as little
interested in charity as the Voltairean
abbes Of the last century. Leland Stan
ford spends a moderate sum in
charities every year, but begging
letters are invariably thrown into
the waste basket. As financier he has no
more conscience, no more moral sense than
"a Metternch or Machievelli in politics,
but he is ready to endow great IL iversity
in memory of IA noble son, canonized in the
grief of dolizing parents. and he may do
much good by teaching the useful arts to
thousands of young men to whom such an
eJuCdblui may Ot INC dN6uU6 10 fortune.
Coils p. Huntington is not naturally a
stingy man he is natural leader of men,
man of broad statesmanlike cast
of mind, and though unscrupulous in carry
ing out his projects, he is far above the
sord d level of mere money grubbing, vet
his charities are much smaller than they
would be if he We're man of education or
of less rugged and calculating tempera-
ment. The writers of begging letters will
save paper, postage, time and disappoint-
ment by leaving this iron-wilied financier
undisturbed, or rather his private Secretary,
who will appreciate the favor. The actors
give something TO institutions. but aside
from this little or nothing. John d. Rookie
Teller, contributes to the support of institu-
lions, but as to individuals he has ruined so
many in the oil business by bis Standard
Monopoly that it is impossible that he would
notice the appeal of those persons who write
begging letters. In short all the wailing
from the cave of E)lus, all the tears oil
Niobe, would not convert a New York mil
lionaire into a philanthropst of the sort
that the writer's of begging letters long To
see, and the efforts made in this dire. tion
are simply amusing or pathetic.
OSCAR WILLoUGHBY RIGGS
The California Sugar King.
From NE Neic York Graphic
Clans SpreckelS IL pettiuu a good deal Of NJ.