Thus, five hundred men properly managed, working industriously, and allowing one-fourth of their wages and their entire profits to accumulate, might be able in five years to own a plant of the actual value of $1,000,000, with the good-will of a business worth as much more, and thereafter the worker might receive full wages and an additional income from dividends, which, if placed in endowment insurance, or in similar safe investments, would enable him to retire, if he wish, in fifteen years with an assured competence.
The $20,000,000 which will be received from the sale of my property, all of which I hereby give, devise, and bequeath to the Lorin French Labor Aid Company, ought to, and I doubt not will, be sufficient to establish co-operative iron foundries, sawmills, woolen factories, glass works, brick yards, and other industrial enterprises, in San Francisco, sufficient to provide remunerative employment for fifteen thousand men. The fund will be invested safely, for it will be based upon the security which is the creator and conservator of all property and property rights, industrious and intelligent labor. The accretions to the fund, even at the moderate rate of interest of three per cent per annum, will add, probably, a thousand workers each year to the number of its beneficiaries, while the repayment and re-investment in similar ways of the original fund, will add several thousand more each year.
The practical operation of the plans I have endeavored to outline will work no injustice to the owners of existing manufacturing establishments, for it will be in the interest of the workmen to purchase such plants and business at their value, rather than to build up new and rival establishments. It is true that some persons now making a profit off the labors of others will be compelled to enlist their capital and energies in other lines; but this, if a hardship, will not be an injustice, and individual convenience must be subservient to the general good.
“I think I have made clear the purposes to which I hereby devote the fortune I have accumulated by fifty years of toil and care—yet in the accumulation of which I have found great enjoyment. The details of my plans I must leave to those who now are, or who hereafter may be, charged with the execution of this trust. In the life upon which I am about to enter—for I have never so questioned the wisdom of the Originating and Ultimate Force of the Universe as to suppose that the death of this body of flesh will be the end of all conscious individual existence—in the life upon which I am about to enter, I hope to derive satisfaction from the fulfillment of the objects of this my last will and testament, to which I hereby affix my signature and seal, this thirtieth day of April, eighteen hundred and ninety-four.
Lorin French [SEAL].
We, William Jelly and Thompson Blakesly, declare that Lorin French, in our presence and on the thirtieth day of April, eighteen hundred and ninety-four, in the city of San Francisco, California, signed the foregoing document, which he then declared to each of us was his last will and testament, and we then, at his request and in his presence, and in the presence of each other, sign our names hereto as witnesses.
William Jelly,
Thompson Blakesly.”
The voice of the clerk ceased, and for a few seconds there was a hush in the court room, which was broken by the harsh, cold tones of Counselor John Lyman.
“I submit to your Honor,” said he, “in behalf of the Public Administrator for whom I appear, and who asks that he be accorded administration of the estate of Lorin French. I submit that this so-called will, although rhetorically and otherwise a very interesting attempt at unpractical philanthropy, is—as a will—simply waste paper. In spirit and in letter it is an utter violation of two sections of the civil code of California. Section 1275 of that code provides that ‘corporations—except those formed for scientific, literary, or educational purposes—cannot take under a will, unless expressly authorized by statute.’ The proposed Lorin French Labor Aid Company is, in its plan, a corporation, neither scientific, literary, nor educational. Considered as a benevolent corporation, it is not now in existence, and is, of course, not authorized by statute to receive this, or any bequest—”