The Lee County journal. (Leesburg, Ga.) 1904-19??, 1907-07-26
FEARS RAID ON CHARITY FUNDS.
Prof. Franklin Glddinss Calls Gifts
Dangerous to the People.

That there is nothing to prevent
giant financial or speculative interests
from swooping down on great trust
funds such as the Sage and Rookie
Teller foundations, and diverting them
from their original purpose to be used
"as a determining influence in financial
operations, is the warning note sound
ed by Franklin H. Giddings, professor
of sociology at Columbia university,
in an article in Wan Norden Mag
azine," entitled The Danger in Char
liable Trusts"
Designing business interests" de-
clares Prof. Giddings, will inevitably
work every possible scheme to obtain
such representation in the control OF
trust funds as will enable them to
swing what they are pleased to call
the business end of these huge ethico-
financial creatures"
Prof Giddings points out that the
creation of millions of dollars in per-
petuity is Numerically opposed to the
principle set down in the constitution
forbidding the tying up of estates be-
yond a generation.
The insurance investigation disclosed,
he states, THE enormous power that
any great surplus or accumulation Of
capital can be made to WELD in the
investment market"
After calling attention to the fact
that the same men are usually to be
found serving as trustees of charitable
and educational trust funds, Prof. Gid
dings says:
Those who know the ways of the bus
mess world are well aware of the rare
opportunity which the chieftains of
high finance TOO often find in board
of trustees made up Of fine old gentle
men selected for their probity, but
overtrustful and not disposed to take
too active an interest in the concerns
which they are supposed to watch.
Even in the case of the Sage gift,
Prof. Giddings declares, where the trus-
tees have been given the widest posi-
bic latitude in the distribution OF the
Sl0000,000 she has set aside for char
ity, lit is obvious that enormous ac-
cumulations of property may be piled
up, the ultimate actual control Of which
may pass into the hands of men whose
attitude toward the state, the social
welfare and unnumbered private inter-
ests, righteous or iniquitous, no human
being can foresee."
He pointed out that it would be
quite possible to use the Sage fund for
the advancement of either anarchy or
socialism, or of protection or free
trade, although he admits that it is i'm
probable that such uses would ever be
made of the money
AS an illustration of his contention
Prof. Giddings gives this instance:
Without any actual conversion, but
merely in debating terms to bankers
or otherwise, large funds can always
be used as a determining influence in
financial operations, as was shown
when in 1903 a syndicate subscription
of $50,0O0,000, no part of which was
ever paid in or used kept down the call
money rate in Wall street to percent.
Such funds can be used also to deter
mine an enormous patronage in a
large number of employments. And all
this can be accomplished without any
conscious completely in wrongdoing by
the legally responsible trustees,
For like reasons the interests that
actually do control the vaster funds
will in general WELD their power in a
way to resist any extension, even the
most reasonable, Of public control over
corporate or other privileged activity.
Whatever "the existing social order"
may happen to be, the power of these
vast accumulations will almost newt
ably be used to maintain it against
any kind of change-benefcial change
no less than destructive.