Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1917-09-08
MRS. RUSSELL SAGE
 ATTAINS 9OTH YEAR
Aged PhilantIlropist Giving Away Wealth at Rate of 5000
 a Day.

New York, Sept. 7.-Living in quiet retirement in an old-fashioned cot tage at Lawrence, R. l., is prim, lit tie, old lady who tomorrow will enter upon her 90th year, and whose chief occupation these many years past has been to ferret out worthy institutions upon which to bestow her wealth at a rate that has been estimated at close to S10,00O day for 365 days of the year. ,.r-,e- 2, -'9E'-
 The aged woman whose deeds of philathrophy have extended to every state of the union and to foreign lands as we'll is Mrs. Margaret Olivia Sage. and the wealth she is engaged in dis tributing. freely but wisely, is the vast fortune left her by her hus- band, the late Russell Sage, the fa- nous financier, who died in 1906.
 Mrs. Sage has made no preparations for an observance of her 89th birthday tomorrow, but she has already been reminded of the approach of the an niversary by the"receipt of an unusual number of parcels and letters at her ong Island cottage, where she lives during the greater part of the year. 1t IS the cottage in which MT. Sage died, and is the favorite home main tained by Mrs. Sage.
 The venerable philanthropist. who probably has given away more money than any other woman in the history of the world, was born in Syracuse. N. Y., Sept. 8, 1928. Her paternai grandmother was Olivia Standish. and she is descendant of Miss Standish and member of the Mayflower so- clety. Her father was a merchant in Syracuse and after she went to school Tn Troy she became a school teacher. For almost twenty years she continu- ed in this occupation. At the age of Al she met and was married to Rus sell Sage. Wealth came to the couple soon after their marriage. but it brought little change in their mode of life. They continued to live simply. and for many years Mrs. Sage did much of her own housework.
 She took great interest in her husbands affairs and five years be- for his death he is said to have left the entire management of his great fortune in her hands.
 It took Russell Sage fifty years to accumulate his fortune of S65 1000 OO0. This great sum represented the pinch ing and scraping together of what amounted to S3,50O a day for the life tune of the great financier. In less than three years after the death of her husband Mrs. Sage had spent more than 1925 100000 for public purposes and the benefit of mankind. Compar- ison of the financier's power to make money with rMs. Sage's faculty of giy- ing it away shows that the widow has given away $2 in the same time that it took MT. Sage to accumulate the proveribal "thirty cents."
 When Mrs. Sage, after the death of her husband, set about distributing her wealth for the causes of education and religion and the amelioration of human misery appealed most strongly to her. One of her first acts was to double the bequestssthat her husband made to his relatives, and all chance of will contest was thus ended.
 Her first large gift was to Rens- selaer Polytechnic institute, better known as the Troy Polytechnic. This institution received an initial gift of $1 100000. The followingday another