Mr. O’Connell. No, I was not.
Mr. Tavenner. Did he discuss with you at the time of the making of his will or prior thereto the purpose he had in mind in setting up a trust in which you were named as one of the trustees?
Mr. O’Connell. No, he had never discussed—in fact, I really did not know that Bob Marshall had any money. He lived very ordinarily, didn’t give any indication he had any money. I was back out in Butte, Mont., and I had been defeated for Congress and I got a notice from the surrogate court in New York that I was named trustee in the will and I thought I had come into a lot of money. I was sent a copy of the will and I was named as trustee of what later became the Robert Marshall Foundation.
Mr. Tavenner. The will authorized you and the other trustees to apply the income derived from the trust and such parts of the principal as the trustees in their own unlimited discretion deemed necessary for the following objects and purposes:
The education of the people of the United States of America to the necessity and desirability of the development and organization of unions of persons engaged in work or of unemployment and unemployed persons, and the promotion and advancement of an economic system in the United States based upon the theory of production for use and not for profit.
Did it not?
Mr. O’Connell. That is correct.
Mr. Tavenner. That part of the will which related to the education of the people of the United States to the necessity and desirability of developing and organizing unions of persons engaged in work was actually considered by the trustees as more or less window dressing, wasn’t it?
Mr. O’Connell. No it was the other way around, Mr. Tavenner. I don’t know when Bob Marshall prepared this will, but I think Mr. Doyle would know about this, Upton Sinclair had his so-called epic movement in California, and there was a lot of discussion of an economy based on production for use rather than for profit and in the first meeting of the trustees that we held there was actually a resolution passed where the rather untenable idea of getting a production-for-use economy in the United States was discussed and it was decided by the trustees that the money should actually be employed to develop as much as we could the organization of trade unions, development and organization of trade unions, organizing of unemployed people, and actually for the development of a cooperation between farmers and workers, farmers and labor, so that instead of having a division of interests as far as they were concerned, and the trustees laid down a rule that with reference to grants, that in order to come within what the trustees considered the provisions of the will as the development of trade unions was concerned, that the grants would have to be made for some trade-union purpose, or development of trade unions, and so on, and that was what was actually done by the trustees.
Mr. Tavenner. Were there occasions when grants were made on that theory—on that principle?