Gifts, Givers

Freemason George Washington dreamed of a University of the U. S. A., at Washington. Last week the Supreme Council, Scottish Rite Masons gave $1,000,000 to George Washington University to found a school of government at the seat of government.

Resolved to die poor, Publisher George G. Booth, son-in-law of the late James Edmund Scripps, newspaper owner, added $6,500,000 to the $5,000,000 he and his wife have already given to complete Cranbrook Foundation--"cultural centre" of five schools and a church--on his estate in northern Michigan (Bloomfield Hills). A children's school and a boy's school, already open, will be followed by a school for girls. They will finally prepare for college, or encourage the talented to enter the school of arts and crafts and the academy of art, yet to be founded. Artists and craftsmen of high repute--Eliel Saarinen,, Finnish architect, Geza Maroti, Hungarian sculptor--will instruct apprentices, form a colony.

Three thousand money seekers, passing the plate to 21,000 alumni last week finished Yale's drive for $20,000,000 endowment. When the drive ended with December's end the amount was oversubscribed--just how much no one knew, as late subscriptions swept in by letter and cable.

New York City subscribed more than half the fund--$12,070,783; Chicago came next with $1,416,976; New Haven third with $766,970. Yale students subscribed $260,142; Alumnus William Howard Taft, $10,000. The drive drew donors from classes ranging over nearly a century, from 1853 to a twelve-year-old who aspires to join the class of 1938; included graduates of Harvard, Princeton, Colgate.

Gifts of the largest ten subscribers totaled $6,450,000. Chief among them was Edward Stephen Harkness (1897), who supplemented his fat subscription with a special gift of cover charges for the whole campaign cost. But for him, said President Angell, the drive would have failed its schedule dates.

From the fund Yale will receive a yearly $1,000,000. A million for improvement and not one cent for expansion.