The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-04-22

SlVen away DurihB lhs Liicbiihe iShe oA Millions of Dollars for Charitable Pur- poses-His American Colonization Plans.
 Vienna, April 21.-Baron Maurice de Hirsch, the great flnancier and philan- thropist, died last night on his estate at Pressburg, Hungary, from a stroke of apoplexy.
 Baron Maurice de Hirsch was born In Bavaria in 1881. He was of Jewish par entage. His father, originally cattle merchant, was very rich man at the time of his death. His son inherited this fortune. The father was ennobled in 1869 in return for services which he had rendered to the state Baron Maurice de Hirsch inherited his title or nobility from his father.
 Baron de Hirsch was in his lifetime one of the richest men in the world. But it is not as the possessor Of enor- nous wealth that his name will be known in years to come, but rather as a philanthropist on a stupendous scale. His greatest charities had for their ob- ject the lifting up of the persecuted and downtrodden of his own race, but his charity, nevertheless, was confined to no single race, sect or nationality. It was essentially cosmopolitan.
 Baron de Hirsch, after his fathers death, associated himself with the banking firm of Bischoffsheim x Gold schmidt. Later he turned his attention to railroad building and management. It was in this that his fortune increas- o5 to trap,ap6o11c nrpportiOoS
 Previous to his first great stroke, the building up of broken down Belgian bank until it became one of the first money institutions in Europe, he had severed his connection with Bischoff- sheim & Goldschmidt. Prior to that he had married daughter of the senior member of the firm. She, too, brought him a fortune.
 Among the railroads that he project ed and built was the Bulgarian-Con- stantinople line. It was an undertak- | ing of the first magnitude. It was div | ided into three sections, for which orig | inally there were three contractors, of which Baron de Hirsch was one. These men decided by lot which section each should construct The barons choice was the one beset by the greatest diffi- culties. It turned out, solely through his great abilities, to be the only one out of which profit was made. Baron Hirsch came out $4,000,000 to the good He fulfilled his contract to the letter The other two contractors lost money He attributed his success to his German ] engineers, his mastery of detail and 1 his economy in small things. Subse- | quent railroad operations were, if pos sible, more successful.
 When he retired from them his for. 1 tune was colossal.
 Baron de Hirsch had one son, Lucien | He was the apple of his fathers eye
 He died. After that the baron adopted | two boys.
 The philanthropy of Baron de Hirscl
 was carried out with tens of millions O
 dollars. q am an old man and child less" he once said T have been emf
 nently successful in all my business
 ventures. With my money I hope tt
 raise out of ignorance and despondenc,
 the most helpless and persecuted rae, in Europe the Jews of Russia and Aus
 tria." And the Boran de Hirsch wa the most unorthodox of Hebrews. H
 would have every Jew baptized. Witt
 the passing away of their religion
 narrowness, he thought would also dis
 appear the ignorance and bigotry int
 which centuries of persecution ha
 crushed them.
 The Hon. Oscar S. Straus, ex-ministe
 to Turkey, man who knew him wei
 said of him: "In order to understan the baron's charitable operations it
 ba
 of all his actions. That is that me
 who have wealth are responsible mankind for it's proper use. He be
 lieved it to be his duty to use his vas
 wealth for the amelioration of the ill
 of man. Like all others who have al
 ten1rted to give money intelligently h , found this no easy task. He was on of the busiest men known, yet practiC ally all his time was devoted to chal ity"
 The baron himself is quoted as say
 ing, when he had subscribed $10,000,0 ,0(
 to the stock of the Jewish Colonizatio q association T devote my money
 these poor wretches simply because a the rest of the world is turning col
 shoulder to them.'
 Baron de Hirsch founded and mail = tained many industrial schools througl . out the east, in European and Asiat ' Turkey and in Egypt. In Galicia alol S he expended $2000,0o0 for education S purposes At one time he offered the Ru t sian government SIC, ,000,0 900 to be usedf f = schools, provide only that no distinctit 2 as to race or sect should be recognize n in its distribution. In 1891 he spent $1' e GOO, 900 in charity, and in 1892 he ga - s2. 800, 900 for the benefit of Russian JeN e ish emigrants to the United States. Tl
 income of the latter fund, S1,25O,O 900
 year. is used, not to encourage or assi
 immigration, but for the assistance, e
 ucation, Americanizing and support le the Russian Hebrew immigrants aft
 they have landed. Schools and settl " ments have also been established he " from the Baron de Hirsch fund.
 His greatest single project "
 founded in 1891-the Jewish Coloniz H. ton association, to establish coloni d of Jews in North and South Ameri
 for agricultural and commercial pu d poses.
 r. A former illness of the baron, whi t. was at one time very serious was