A Needle's Eye

Rockefeller Jr. Last week, a certain name appeared three times in U. S. news items. The references were brief:

On Wednesday, Mr. John D. Rockefeller Jr. had accompanied Judge Elbert H. Gary and eight other spokesmen of the National Citizens' Committee of One Thousand for Law Enforcement to Washington-o breakfast with Calvin Coolidge.

On Thursday, Mrs. Mary Anne Rudd, aunt of John D. Rockefeller Jr., had died at her home in Cleveland.

On Saturday, Charles E. Hughes had resigned as Secretary of State. Journalists recalled that Mr. Hughes had been the first leader of the Bible class of the Fifth Ave. (now Park Ave.) Baptist Church, that Mr. John D. Rockefeller Jr. is at present Honorary President of that class.

Meagre enough, these items, bearing as they do upon that awkward, austere, magical name whose connotation is an unquotable sum and an unknown personality. Yet, out of such flying hints, has grown the outline of a character, blurred at first, like a face vaguely limned in charcoal scratches, clarified little by little with inkier facts, until the quality and temper of the man have come to stand out distinct, significant.

It is not the fact that his personality has been largely unknown, that his wealth abashes ciphers, that makes him significant. There is no significance in mystery. John Davison Rockefeller Jr. is significant because he has twisted a parable, and because he has made a signally novel application of an ancient law.

The parable is one that has been often quoted with smug exultation in needy homes, in great houses with lamentable quakings. It has to do with a camel, a rich man's son, Heaven, the eye of a needle. The law, equally familiar, has to do with two Gods--one the Father of the Christian faith, the other Mam mon; a man cannot serve both. If he cleaves to the one, must he foreswear wealth? or can he discipline wealth and its devouring deity to the service he has himself elected?

In an article published some years ago in the Cosmopolitan Magazine it was said of Mr. Rockefeller Jr.: "He is an utterly negative person. . . ." Negatives stated of him in another magazine were: ''He has no personal enemies. . . . His altruism has never been questioned." These statements were based on correct, if casual, considerations of his ethics, his philanthropies, his business.

Ethics. Mr. Rockefeller is familiar with the parable about the rich man's son. He is a Christian, a member of the flock of the Park Avenue Baptist Church, Manhattan. At this Church there is a Bible class, first conducted (as noted above) by Charles Evans Hughes, originated by Dr. Faunce, who became President of Brown University, from which Mr. Rockefeller graduated in 1897. Mr. Rockefeller became interested in the Bible class, became its leader, instructed it for seven years. Now he is its Honorary President. Several times a year he attends its meetings, reads to the members out of Holy Scripture. Pithy platitudes, adopted from Scripture, lard all his public speeches. "The big thing in life is work. . . . Success comes by doing the common, everyday things of life uncommonly well." Hardly original, these utterances are those of a man to whom practicality is native, abstraction difficult, the defect of whose thought is rather narrowness than looseness. Narrow also is the needle's eye.

Philanthropies. A white hand, tapering from a bush of lace, thrust out of a coach-window; yellow Louis d'or spinning to cobbles from which they are clutched up by talons, bitten by teeth, as yellow as they. That is munificence, that is a great lord's largess. Not so gives John D. Rockefeller Jr. He has small envy, he owns, of having his currency squandered by renegadoes and pecksniffs, or pocketed, perhaps, by some unctuous issuer of deceitful supplications from a quack benefaction-bureau. For health, for education, for research, for religion, he gives largely-- after his secretaries have carefully investigated the beneficiaries. His major philanthropies since 1910 lave been:

Bureau of Social Hygiene, Inc.... .$1,350,000

United War Work Campaign 567,000

Y. M. C. A. International Committee 1,500,000

American Relief Administration... 1,000,000

The General Board of Promotion of the Northern Baptist Convention. 1,300,000

Brown University "Endowment and Development Fund of 1919" 500,000

Interchurch World Movement 1,500,000

American Museum of Natural History 1,040,000

Institute of Social and Religious Research 730,000

International House 2,360,000

New York City Baptist Mission Society 530,000

New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations ... 3,500,000

New York Zoological Society 500,000

Business. None of the subtleties bred in many well-informed intellects by the scrutiny of so complicated a problem obscure Mr. Rockefeller's grasp of the difficulties of Capital's relation to Labor. Wrote he: "If the manager keeps in mind that in dealing with employes he is dealing with human beings; and if, likewise, the workmen realize that the managers are themselves human beings, how much bitterness will be avoided!"

When, in the Colorado mine strikes of 1913-15, disastrous civil war arose --miners up in arms against mine-guards and State militia--Mr. Rockefeller (who controlled the Colorado Fuel and Iron Co., the largest concern affected) was besought by President Wilson to restore order. To Colorado went he. There for several weeks, always in considerable personal danger, he talked to miners in their huts, owners in their citadels, until a basis for arbitration was reached.

Around this incident Author Arthur Train built his recent novel, The Needle's Eye (TIME, Oct. 6). Minus certain literary garnishings, the book was a portrait rf John Davison Rockefeller Jr. The author endeavors to suggest that impossible as it may seem for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, the thing has, in this latter day, been compassed. Whatever Mr. Train's ability as a fictionist, few have criticized the justness of his implication. Mammon, it seems, may serve.