The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-07-14
MEMORIAL TO ABRAM s. HEWITT.

MEMORIAL TO ABRAd s. HEWITT.
 The movement to raise a fund Of two hundred thousand dollars as an endow- ment of Cooper Union in memory of Abram s. Hewitt has already raised little more than that sum: s211 1,S1O, to be exact. The striking thing about the endowment is that one hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars was con- tributed by seven men, Andrew Carne- gie, John D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpont
 Morgan and Jacob H. Schiff being among the large contributors. It is a fine thing for these men to give money for a memorial to MT. Hewitt, because they are in that way honoring a broad CT citizenship than the type which they
 in person represent. MT. Hewitt gave money to good causes as these men do, not in such large sums, but according
 to his means. But the significant thing in MT. Hewitt's life was not the money
 he made nor the money he gave away.
 It was the fact that he gave himself freely for the benefit of his fellows.
 He had large business interests and he
 was, according to earlier standards, a. rich man. He might have been a richer. man had he allowed himself to become
 absorbed in those business interests and had he given the whole of his bril-
 liant mind and indomitable energy to amassing wealth. The value of his ex-= ample as a citizen is that he prizes oth-. CT things above money. He kept cer- tain proportion of his mind and his time for public affairs as he went along. Hc. served his country in congress, his city in the mayors chair, and he served his. fellows still more by his wise counsel in tie management of Cooper Union and
 of many other agencies for the promo tion of the welfare of his kind. Fur ther than that, MT Hewitt kept close acquaintance with public affairs day by day and he was often ready with the right woi at the right time to iso1u- ence public opinion in it's formative stage.
 That is ideal citizenship, and it is a very different ideal from that which tn, typical wealthy pn lanthroplst holds up
 Ali orgy Of acTl,sItsJn Followed ny aa orgy O disburs sllc,it is mr.'i more common example Of the attitgGa uf sttong men toward wss tn. Even fiat is an improvement on :he elder fasilio.,, which atoned for life spent in greedy acquisition by generous bequests. which went to the charities named if tn. law
 yers were not able to divert the estate to their own pockets by will contests. The competitive spur s far too nowar- ful a stimulus both in the acquisition Of
 money and in the Gesotspn of 1t to prb- lie uses after it is pile up. In both op- erations the desire 10 make the highest mark is so perfectly obvious tha. q cynical world may be excused if 1t some tines fails to see sympathy and low
 ing kindness in mammoth endowments of which the first condition is that the donors name shall ve carved in big let
 ters over the gift The distinction of MT Hewitt's example lies in his mode ration. He helped to make things right as he went along, and that is vastly more effective citizenship than giving millions to straighten them after they have gone wrong.
 If this Hewitt characteristic makes due impression upon the very rich men who have contributed to his memorial, and upon the great number of other rich men whose ideals are those of the memerializers rather than Of the man honored. his life will be fruitful of good. But It Is not fitting that memorial to Abram $. Hewitt should be erected in whole or in great part by men of vast wealth. Mir Hewitt was peoples man rather than a rich mans man, afe# though he had scant sympathy with some of the socialistic stuff that is be- ing preached by professed advocates of the people, Our institutions are sound CT and saner from his participation in their forming and the sons and daugh-. ters of the everyday man on a smal salary are the better for this very Coop CT Union in which he was so deeply in- terested. Those people, as we'll as the
 rich, ought to be represented in a HeW- it memorial. If they contribute to this fund they will know that the money is
 wisely used for one of the most helpful institutions ever known Tn New York. There are not yet half enough oppor- tunities for the boy who wishes to learn trade, instead of trying to sell
 goods over q counter. While Cooper Union is not specifically or chiefly a trade school, 1t offers valuable aid in that direction and will offer more op- portunities of that sort when it has more money. For this reason, as well
 as in gratitude to the charactersof the
 man, the Hewitt memorial subscription