The Waterbury Democrat., 1937-06-16
Giving Rather Than Getting Occupies John. D
By WILLIS THORNTON

ANEfh oGA NANS SSN~- - "TF I only had the moneyl"
 1 The most popular form of day-dreaming is to speculate on the good one would do, the lavish benefactions one would make, the social improvements one would launch-"h only had the money"
 There is one man to whom this is no day dream. He has the money. From earliest youth he knew he would have the money. It is his career, his life, his destiny; no day-dream, perhaps sometimes a. nightmare.
 He is John D. Rockefeller, Jr. His father, who recently slipped out of life at 97, was the first millionaire. Coming to the busi- nes stage when a vast industry was about to be born, he largely built the oil industry along lines that stil govern that colossus. He retired from bushes life at 57, with fortune estimated at $200,- 900, ,00O distilled from coal oil. The rise of the automobile business was to boost that fortune later to a billion, and later still to an un- heard of total of nearly two bil- lions.
 A Different Task
 His son, mounting that golden throne, was literally in. the posi- tion of the youthful Alexander. In business and finance there were no more worlds for him to conquer. His task - and once he sighed, T didn't ask for this job" was to administer, not to build. He set himself the task of giving, not getting.
 Now this younger" Rockefeller is 63 years old. For more than 25 years he has been administering the affairs left behind by the old man who was slipping slowly down the declining years to be a legend and then to die. The son, the present Rockefeller, is living example of what one intelligent, serious-minded, well intentioned man really did if I only had the money"
 Vast philanthropies begun by the father after his Croesus-like business career had ended are still being carried on by the younger man. New ones, of a more varied and individual nature, have been added to them. The vast tWo- billion dollar fortune has been clipped away in constant effort to distribute more than the annual income from it. Today the best estimate is that about a half bil- lion, or 500 millions, remain of what was once nearly two billions.
 Mites and Millions
 The elder Rockefeller started the giving. Long before his death he had given away greater Jumps of money than any man 1n the history of the world. Why
 Most people believed, when began to shed his mil- lions, that an old man had become conscience-stricken and was fran tically, almost aimlessly, trying to qualify for Baptist heaven. That was less than just.
 The elder John D. Rockefeller, when he was a penniless young man clerking in Cleveland for $3.50 a week, kept a little ledger" The Rockefellers always were, and still are, methodical to a fault. In the ledger the young clerk noted, Sabbath School, .05; Cause, .10;" and so on. The little book reveals that the young man living on $3.50 a week was giving almost 8 tenth of his income to charitable causes. That little book throws revealing light on the later benefactions of the Rockefellers, father and son.
 When he started to give away the elder Rockefeller went at it scientifically and thoroughly. He had always given lavishly to the Baptist Church, whose various activities he aided with at least S20, 100000. He was the principal of the modern University of Chicago, with a $35, 100000 gift.
 The Firm Foundations
 But that was only start. He really began giving in 1901 with the Rockefeller Institute for Med- Ical Research, which he started with $55,OO0,000. Because of that gife, men in white are still bend- ing over test-tubes in a dozen laboratories and hospitals, and we are nearer to mastery over pneu- monia, Bright's disease, rheumatic heart trouble, and other wide spread diseases than we ever were before. Under Dr. Herbert Cas- ser, the Institute support sa great hospial where it treats the cases under study.
 Next came the General Educa- ton Board. It was begun with whopping endowment of $127,- poo, ,0OO, and its principal job has been to make grant of money to deserving educational Institutions.
 It has aided scholars with nearly million dollars worth of fellowships to enable them to go on with work which lack of