The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-07-06
Hands Out $2,OOO,OOO
 Every Year To Wor- thy Causes

NEW YORK, June 28.-At quar- ter to nine every morning he mounts the steps of the building with the som- Der facade at Wall street and enters the door on which is the legend: First National Bank. So regularly and so constantly on the minute every work dayzof the year that his coming up the steps of the building might be compared to the coming up of the sun.
 He appears from out of the thou sands belched forth from the subways and streaming down from the bridge as one whose step is full of youth, whose horizon recognizes no limitations. Nor can any one who sees him enter that office avoid the impression that he is making a mistake-that he is enter ing the wrong building. For his white hair, his decidedly mutton chop, dea- conesque whiskers, his honest blue eyes and his sober dress might be sooner ex- pected on. the steps of the building across the street, the building with the white stones in the yard where rest those whose feet once trod the pave ments now so vastly peopled-Trinity church.
 George Fisher Baker is the man.
 And of all the giant figures that have emerged from the street called straight there probably is none so strange. For now, at the age of S4, his life is still a blank to his most intimate friends. In fact, until he had reached and passed tme Biblical span to one outside of Wall street had ever heard of him. Then, in 1909, when he was made president of the bank, an effort was made S to penetrate the veil which cloaked this mans career from the world at large, from the man on the street among whom he had walked for a half century, unheralded and unac- claimed:
 Something More Interesting
 But the efforts were unavailings
 They found nothing about the man.
 But they discovered something more interesting than anything that might have turned up in the way of anecdote.
 They found his deeds.
 They discovered that he was a phil anthropist of extraordinary judgment and warm sympathies. And they watched him, these men of the pencil who chronicle the news as it occurs. And as the years, rolled on from 1908 they reported many things.
 In the past six years Mir. Baker has given away $12,000,000 to public bene- factions. .
 He gave $5,O0O, 900 to Harvard-and he didn't tie up the hands of those who will dispose of it with hampering legal strings.
 He gave .$2,OOO,O0O to Cornell--and was just as liberal in carefully avoiding any written stipulation which would embarass those who could only make a mistake chargeable to overzealousness at the very worst. ...
 He gave the Red Cross $2,OO0,0O in 1917 to help put across Uncle Sams big adventure in Europe. " . He gave 100000 to the American Metropolitan Museum of Art in the in- terest of the institution which so well serves the public.
 Other Gifts
 Other gifts he, made are {: New York hospital, $750,000; Columbia Universi- ty (for Baker field), $7O0,000; the Museum of Naturdal History, $250, 900 ; Teachers College, $1O0,OO; Morgan Hall, $1OO,OO0.
 His rich gifts to higher education arc the more astonishing because George Fisher Baker never went to college. He was one of those men who arrive big without the help which collegiate training aims to give to all who come to imbibe of It's stream of learning. But, unlike many of his type who are inclined to discount the value of a col lege diploma just because they had something in their makeup that made them successful without it's aid, he realizes that such a training is some thing that no young man should delib- erately pass by. For, much as some like to tell of the college men who end