THE ROCKEFELLER INSTITUTE 305 a laboratory in which would be conducted investigations in all departments of medical research by a large resident staff. (2) The building of a hospital in which special groups of patients would be treated in order to develop new methods. (3) The establishment of a journal for the publication of the results of the institute's investigation and discussions concerning them. The ultimate plans looked to the establishment of popular lectures for spreading information on hygiene, the institution of a hygienic museum, and the dissemination of literature bearing on all problems investigated. Mr. John D. Rockefeller had already donated $1,200,000 for establishment of the institute, and it was understood that the founder would provide all the funds for its maintenance, and for carrying out the plans of the directors on a complete scale. CHAPTER XII SOCIAL CONDITIONS A review of social conditions year after year is largely a review of the same old disorders and the efforts to find new remedies for them: Poverty and the struggle for its alleviation, crime and the measures for its punishment and prevention, drunkenness and the movements to stamp it out or to control it, unwholesome living conditions and the schemes to better them, unfair working terms and the proposals to set them right, unjust distribution of wealth and the attempts at equalization, destroying tendencies in family and social life and the efforts to check them, and finally the underlying cause of all disorder, ignorance and the manifold educational movements to counteract it. The Problem of Poverty The above problems, moreover, are not the problems of any one country, but the problems that all civilized nations have in common. Take, for instance, the problem of poverty, which will be found to vary not in kind, but in degree, and largely according to the wealth of nations. The total wealth of the world has been estimated at $400,000,000,000, which is probably an underestimate of the actual amount of money and property in civilized and semi-civilized lands. Of this the greater part is owned by Americans and Europeans. The United States has somewhere near one-fourth of the whole. The United Kingdom of Great Britain is the richest country of Europe. The annual income of England's population is said to be $5,600,000,000, and the yearly savings $1,948,000,000. When it comes to estimating wealth per capita, the English are the best off financially of any people in the world, and the Scotch next. The four other countries that have the most wealth per capita are Australia, France, the United States, and Denmark. After England and Scotland, Australia is the richest country in the world in proportion to its population. The distribution of ny ma und ients t SOCIAL VALUE OF THE RICH 307 national wealth, however, scarcely affects the question of poverty as a social evil. Poverty is not, and never was, a force in national character building. It is the poor peoples who are crushed and oppressed, ignorant and superstitious, weak and helpless. The poor races are never great, strong, and characterful. The whole trend of civilization from the earliest times and in every clime and country has been to get away view from poverty, and every step away from poverty toward greater wealth, the comfort, leisure, and convenience has been, and is, a step toward higher easure civilization. President Eliot, of Harvard University, in addressing an audience of workmen at Lynn, Mass., said that nobody was ever and the injured or hindered by working as many hours as his physical strength s to could endure. In direct contradiction to this doctrine factory legislation restricting the working hours of women and children was urged as contributing to character development and the social uplifting of the working people. qualize forts wealt Sp se The social value of the rich, on the other hand, was manifested in two ways: In introducing into domestic and social life all improvements that art and science can contribute, and in setting a higher standard of living for those who come next in the scale. The multitude of improvements that the rich have introduced in architecture, sanitation, domestic decoration and appointments, have practically revolutionized the average homes in this country during the last generation. Improvements that are at first too expensive for anybody but the rich themselves are adopted, and then by that power of imitation characteristic of progress, they are adopted by others nearest to them in the social scale. By this increased use it becomes possible to commercialize them, and so make them cheap enough to come within the reach of millions. But while the influence of wealth in extending culture and sanitation should be recognized, it should not be confounded with the evil effect of the dominating passion of the age to acquire property. As to the direct effect of riches on American life, Mr. Ralph D. Payne collected some interesting and illuminating figures for the World's Work. One of the first effects was the great and healthy. increase in out-of-door sport and recreation in the last twenty-five years. Nearly $10,000,000 were spent for sporting goods in 1903, as against $2,000,000 twenty years ago. The increase and cost of country homes and estates was attended by an improvement in taste of the manner of living. Standards in architecture, interior decoration, and landscape gardening were higher, and the tendency of the very rich to herd together for the sake of vulgar ostentation was on the wane. The growth in industry, sobriety, and ability to make economic gain, has outstripped the waste expenditure in unproductive luxury. The increase in population during the last decade was 22 per cent., while the increase in direct savings was 80 per cent., showing that the increased expenditure for luxuries had not caused a decrease in productive efficiency. Benefactions The obligations of rich to poor were never more widely recognized than in 1903. In making up the list of benefactions for the year the statistician was compelled to rely upon gifts for public or semi-public purposes. On this basis it was found that more than $76,000,000 went to charity in the United States alone, of which over $40,000,000 was donated to our colleges. Mr. Andrew Carnegie, following his own theory that a private fortune is a public trust, established one hundred and five libraries, an average of two a week, at a total cost of over $5,500,000, and his record of known benefactions for the year was almost $16,000,000. $1,500,000 went to the Hague Tribunal, $4,000,000 was turned over to provide a fund for steel workers, $2,500,000 to the improvement of Dumfermline, Scotland, his old home; $1,000,000 for an engineers' home in New York City; $600,000 to Tuskegee Institute, and a number of smaller sums for various other causes. Of the $8,944,597 of donations credited to John D. Rockefeller during 1903, the largest sum, $6,000,000 went to Rush Medical College, and $1,800,ooo to the University of Chicago, with which the Medical College is now affiliated, nearly $300,000 to six small colleges, and $160,000 to the Young Men's Christian Association. Mr. Pulitzer's gift of $2,000,000 to establish a school of journalism at Columbia University aroused more comment than any other gift of the year. Gordon Mackay's bequest of $4,000,000 to Harvard, and Arioch Wentworth's bequest of $7,000,000 to found an industrial school were disputed by the heirs of the deceased. Henry C. Phipp's gift of $1,500,000 for a free hos pital for consumptives was the most notable of the gifts to pure philanthropy. Philanthropic gifts made in the United States showed a steady progress both in their volume and in the wisdom of their aims. The largest sums went for the alleviation of suffering, or for work that gives promise of alleviating it. Hospitals and medical research, and the charities that attend them received larger sums than any other general purpose. This is a sane and well-balanced judgment. The strongest human impulse is to relieve suffering, and the best application of science is to prevent it. This is sound sociology, as well as good personal conduct. Twenty-five years ago there were but four hundred and forty-two hospitals in the United States. In 1903 there were two thousand five hundred hospitals, having a total bed capacity of over three hundred thousand, or one bed to every three hundred and fifty inhabitants. There were 4,000 institutions providing hospital care, New York heading the list with 350 institutions providing a bed to every one hundred inhabitants. California came next with 125 institutions, with one bed to every hundred and twenty-five. The lowest on the list was Georgia, with thirty-five small hospitals, and only one bed to every fifteen hundred people. Illinois with 200 institutions, and one bed for every 250 people, was an average State. Needs of Organized Charity There was noticeable a widespread sentiment to secularize charity, since modern charity is on such a colossal scale that to finance it is. almost like financing a big corporation. Under our system, charities conducted by the State must be undenominational and without direct religious control. The State and City are all the while assuming larger and larger charitable functions. The work of relief, of reform, of care for the crippled, the blind, the insane, which used to be almost exclusively left to private hands or to the churches, is now taken over on a constantly enlarging scale by the public authorities. The report for the year 1903 of the recommendations of Governors of States, of State Boards and Commissions for legislation affecting the charitable and correctionable institutions of their respective States, recognized the following needs: In California, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Wisconsin, hospitals for the criminal insane were recommended; in California, |