The age-herald., 1901-01-22
The Vanity of MiiIionaires.

Andrew Carnegies greatest personal vanity takes the form of building libra ries, mainly for the reason perhaps that he has the ambition to secure a place in his- tory as a patron of letters, and so in grati- flying that vanity he accomplishes incal- cuable good for mankind, and wins man. kinds good-natured and sincere thanks said student of men and events.
 Whilst MT. Carnegie has a greater in- come than the Tsar could spend, he yet does a grand public service by giving some of his millions to aid in placing good books within reach of the multitudes who can't afford to buy books. Every library he has built or shall build will be noble monument to him after he and his mill lions of money are gone, and posterity will not forget this extraordinary man.
 But with Rockefeller and the late Le-. land Stanford, university builders the con- tention is quite different. Earthly vanity of the vainest quality led Stanford to found that university which his sometime mentally afflicted widow is doing so much to bring into disrepute through meddling with certain of the professors who teach economics differently from the teachings of her late lamented. The world, which had heard of Senator Stanford through hear ing of his vast wealth, sorrowed with him and his wife when untimely death come in the form of Roman fever in Italy, de- prived them of their only offspring, a noble boy of eighteen. The poor mother for whom ones heart bleeds even now, was almost bereft of all reason by that terri ble disaster in her life. Her mind never of heroic cast, became unbalanced and she suffered herself to fall into the hands of some theving spiritualists. She brought two or three choice mediums oily ras- calls of both sexes, from New York to Washington, and for about year two of them lived with her in her palace, swim ding her during that time of $1S0,000 At last friends interfered, and by threatening to put her under restraint and the 'medi- ums' in jail, the rogues were gotten quit of. It was all very mournful and out rageous those so-called spiritualists gain ing the confidence of a broken-hearted mother in order to rob her!
 Iceland Stanford displayed the purely personal character of his vanity by pro- viding that the school to which he gave $15, ,OO0 0O0 or SEQ, O00,000 should bear the name
 
 in honor of his lost boy primarily and him. self in fuller degree.
 Rockefeller is undoubtedly doing harm, wide spread harm, by his lavish gifts of millions on millions to the Chicago Uni versity. which is apparently being pre- pared for change in it's name to the John D. Rockefeller Standard Oil University His gifts have reached the bounds of vul- garest display of new riches, and when one of his hired men, professor, argues in public at length to prove that John D. Rockefeller is a greater man than Shakes peare' the whole thing becomes a ridicu- 1ous laughing stock, and is irresisti- bly reminded of the Hon. Webster F'lana- gan of Flanagan Mills, Texas, who de- clared in a famous letter that he himself was 'biger man than ole Grant Rocke- feller not only deters men of modest means from giving, but makes giving at all. in so far as he make it, thing of ridi- cule. Having bought his family into the outskirts of society, Rockefeller seeks to buy his way to fame as a university build peare. And that $10,000 he gave the Baptist preacher for performing his daughters marriage ceremony-how ostentatously vulgar!"