Lower coast gazette., 1910-04-09
SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 1910.
The Rockefeller Foundation.

- N'Fo @'N' - 49,
eat ASPECTS as is that immortality guaranteed by
their teachers to all good christians. Mr.. Rock
etclIer offers to congress the control OF the
largest amount Ct money ever placed under any
civic control. 1t amounts to hundreds OF nil
hons Of dollars and if held for q time as an m
vestmcnt it is thought that the proposed be-
quest or foundation would reach a thousand mil
lions Of dollars. It presents a pr0Dtem to the
people of the United States that has never been
presented to any other people on earth. Inc
consideration that has been given to the pr0po-
sition during the last few months is beginning
f. bring out the doubtful merits of the PROPOSE
ton.
The founders Of this government in its Or
ganic law prohibited the entailment OF property
and hence made it impossible to found such an
r. aristocracy as that of England at the present
time. In this country money cannot be lett TO
anv rem0ter heir than to ones chlldrens chill
dren. In this way it has been until recently
impossible to build up great fortunes IN the
United States and the fortunes OF the AStor
family, made in the fur trade, and Of A. I.
Stewart, made in merchandising, were regarded
a half a century ago as very exceptional, WIN
the organization of the various trusts and the
practical Immortality thus given to corporations,
the ideas of the original founders of our repub-
lie are being defeated. The property is being
kept together and under corporate control and
in this way, with a conservative management
and especially with q management that elects
its W successors, it becomes possible to eXer-
else a power for good Or for evil entirely beyond
any Of the rights of the individual citizen as con-
templated by the founders of our government.
In our own state it was the custom until very
recently to allow no corporations to be organized
excepting for agricultural and manufacturing
purposes, Later on our state followed the other
states OF the union and interpretations for every
kind of business were permitted, provided the
word limited was added to the name and
made as public as the name. Now even that
safeguard is broken down and corporations can
be organized for practically any purpose not in
consistent with the constitution Of the state and
can be organized for a term of ninety-nine
years, in this way completely overthrOWlng the
prohibition Of transmitting property beyond the
second generation.
Now Genes forward Mr., Rockefeller with
perhaps a thousand million dollars under his
control, and offers if to a corporation of his own
creation, with a vague description of its inten-
tons and our people are beginning to discover
that we should be building up in our own midst
a FEankerstein greater than the country itself.
We find even now that it is almost impossible to
successfully punish any of these great corpora
tons and men like Mr.. Rockefeller himself and
things that are prohibited by the
common law and their actions stand unchal-
lenged. With a great corporation, whether it
was engaged in charity work, educational or
political work, it would become a power in the
land practically invincible. If a president Of
the United states were to be elected the first in
quiry would naturally be as to the predisposition
of the Rockefeller foundation. The trustees of
that foundation would have their organic law
before them and they would be permitted to do
whatever they desired to do within the limits of
the statute law as it then stood. Mr.. Rockefel-
Ter has been wise enough to give congress per-
mission to modify or change the law, but we
tSFSNS OF nv tfftiS tioo HS StSStottt tftdt tWC
trustees of the proposed foundation should be
ether than theses elected in the beginning by him
self and later on by the board as then constituted.
We don't like to make any religious conpari-
sons, but the order of the Jesuits, one of the
orders of the Roman Catholic Church, composed
of men who are considered the finest teachers
on earth of modern knowledge, by the very fact
of their superior intelligence and accumulated
wealth, have been expelled from some Roman
Catholic countries, simply because of the i'm
mense control that they exercised. We have no
idea that Mr.. Rockefeller intends to build up a
great Baptist Church, although his predictions
are in that direction, but, be it as it may, the
power would lie in his proposed foundation
sufficient practically to overthrow the govern
ment of the United States. 1t ought not to be
permitted, and his funds should be distributed
to his children's children if he sees fit, and then
gradually back among the hundreds of millions
of people of the United States from whom he
absorbed it.