It is not by his public life, however, that he will be remembered, for he did nothing there that was in any way memorable, but by his gift of twenty million dollars to found a great university at Palo Alto, California, in memory of his only son. On May 14, 1887, the cornerstone of this great institution was laid, and the university was formally opened in 1891. The idea of its founder was that it should teach not only the studies usually taught in college, but also other practical branches of education, such as telegraphy, type-setting, type-writing, book-keeping, and farming. This it has done, and so rapid has been its growth, that it now has over seventeen hundred students enrolled.
After Senator Stanford's death in 1893, the university was further endowed by his widow, Jane Lathrop Stanford, so that the present productive funds of the university, after all of the buildings have been paid for, amount to nearly twenty-five million dollars.
The second of the great givers of recent years is John Davison Rockefeller, whose name is synonymous with the greatest natural monopoly of modern times, the Standard Oil Company. His rise from clerk in a grocery store to one of the greatest capitalists in the history of the world is an interesting one, as well as an important one in the commercial history of America. Born at Richford, New York, in 1839, his parents moved to Cleveland, Ohio, when he was a boy of fourteen, and such education as he had was secured in the Cleveland public schools. He soon left school for business, getting employment first as clerk in a commission house, and at nineteen being junior partner in the firm of Clark & Rockefeller, commission merchants.
At that time the petroleum fields of Pennsylvania were just beginning to be developed, and young Rockefeller's attention was soon attracted to them. He seems to have been one of the first to realize the vast possibilities of the oil business, and in 1865, he and his brother William built at Cleveland a refinery which they called the Standard Oil Works. They had little money, but unlimited nerve, and very soon began the work of consolidation, which culminated in the formation of the Standard Oil Trust in 1882. They were able to kill competition largely by securing from the railroads lower shipping rates than any competitor, in some cases going so far as to get a rebate on all oil shipped by competitors. That is, if a railroad charged the Standard Oil Company one dollar to carry its oil between two points and charged a competitor a dollar and a quarter for the same service, that extra quarter went, not into the coffers of the railroad, but into the coffers of the Standard Oil Company. Such methods of business have since been made illegal, and the Standard is compelled to do business on the same basis as its competitors, but its vast resources and occupancy of the field give it an advantage which nothing can counteract.
The operations of the Standard Oil Company naturally piled up a great fortune for John D. Rockefeller—how great cannot even be estimated. Not until comparatively recent years, did he turn his attention from making money to spending it, but when he did, it was in a royal fashion. Ten million dollars were given to the University of Chicago, which opened its doors in 1892, and now has an enrollment of over five thousand students; ten million more were given to the General Education Board, organized in 1903, for the purpose of promoting education in the United States, without distinction of race, sex, or creed, and especially to promote and systematize various forms of educational beneficence; a million was given to Yale; the great Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research was founded at New York and liberally endowed; and Mr. Rockefeller's total benefactions probably exceed a total of thirty millions. This will soon be greatly increased, for he has just asked Congress to charter an institution to be known as the Rockefeller Foundation, which he will endow on an enormous scale to carry out various plans of charity, through centuries to come.
He seems recently to have experienced a change of heart, too, toward the public. During his early years, he gained a reputation for coldness and reserve, which made him probably the best-hated man in the United States. Then, suddenly, he changed about. Instead of refusing himself to reporters, he welcomed them; he seemed glad to talk, anxious to show the public that he was by no means such a monster as he was painted; and he has even, quite recently, written his life story and given it to a great magazine for publication. Seldom before has any public man shown such a sudden and complete change of heart. He still remains, in a sense, an enigma, for it seems possible that the smiling face he has lately turned to the world conceals the real man more effectively than the frowning countenance he wore in former years.
As the dramatist saves his finest effect for the fall of the curtain, so we have saved for the last the most remarkable giver in history—Andrew Carnegie, whose total benefactions amount to at least one hundred millions of dollars. A sum so stupendous would bankrupt many a nation, yet Mr. Carnegie is so far from bankrupt that his gifts show no sign of diminution. The story of how, starting out as a poor boy, on the lowest round of the ladder, he acquired this immense fortune, is a striking one.
Andrew Carnegie was born in Scotland in 1835. His father was a weaver, at one time fairly well-to-do, for he owned four hand looms; but the introduction of steam ruined hand-loom weaving, and after a long struggle, ending in hardship and poverty, the looms were sold at a sacrifice and the family set sail for America. Mrs. Carnegie happened to have two sisters living at Pittsburgh, and there the family settled—by one of those curious chances of fate, the very place in all the world best suited to the development of young Andrew Carnegie's peculiar genius.
At the age of twelve years, he became a wage-earner, his first position being that of bobbin-boy in a cotton mill at Alleghany City, where his salary was $1.20 a week. Pretty soon he was set to firing a small engine in the cellar of the mill, but he did not like this work, and finally secured a position as messenger boy in the office of the Atlantic & Ohio Telegraph Company, at Pittsburgh. One night, at the end of the month, he did not receive his pay with the rest of the boys, but was told to wait till the others had left the room. He thought that dismissal was coming, and wondered how he could ever go home and tell his father and mother! But he found that he was to be given an increase in salary, from $11.25 to $13.50 a month.
"I ran all the way home," said Mr. Carnegie, in telling of the incident, long afterwards. "Talk about your millionaires! All the millions I've made combined, never gave me the happiness of that rise of $2.25 a month. Arrived at the cottage where we lived, I handed my mother the usual $11.25, and that night in bed told brother Tom the great secret. The next morning, Sunday, we were all sitting at the breakfast table, and I said: 'Mother, I have something else for you,' and then I gave her the $2.25, and told her how I got it. Father and she were delighted to hear of my good fortune, but, motherlike, she said I deserved it, and then came tears of joy."