Rockefeller Stewardship

As has happened every summer for 15 years the Rockefeller Foundation, with John D. Rockefeller Jr. as chairman of the trustees and George E. Vincent as president, last week made annual report of the stewardship of the millions which the Rockefellers have given it.

John D. Rockefeller began to heap up his philanthropies right after his friend and doctor, the late H. L. Biggar, had warned him to cease active business or die quickly. That was 30 years ago, about the time when Andrew Carnegie became aggressive with donations (TIME, June 10). The Carnegie donations became $350,000,000, nine-tenths of the Carnegie fortune. The Rockefeller donations are already $550,000,000, probably not one-half of the Rockefeller fortune. Carnegie philanthropies deal chiefly with education and science, Rockefeller philanthropies chiefly with medicine and education.

Large Rockefeller benefactions began in 1901 with the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. Quickly (1902) followed the General Education Board. In 1909 came the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission to control hookworm in the U. S. In 1913 (the year of the Colorado Fuel strike) the Rockefeller Foundation was formed and the Sanitary Commission recreated as the International Health Board. Three years after Mrs. Rockefeller died he created the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial (1918). At the beginning of 1929 the fields of these were revised and their organizations reduced to two--the Rockefeller Foundation (international) and the General Education Board (exclusively U. S.). Their combined capital endowment last week was more than $203,000,000. Since their foundings the four boards have spent a quarter of a billion dollars of their capital, besides their vast income from investments. The Rockefeller Foundation itself has spent $144,189,000 during its 16 years.

Last year the Foundation spent $21,690,738. Of that, $12,000,000 went as endowment for the New China Medical Board. To the China Medical Board also went the land, buildings and equipment of the Rockefeller-created Peking Union Medical College, one of China's main medical centres. To make the Chinese believe that the Rockefellers meant the China Medical Board to be nationalistic, Chinese have been placed in control of its board of trustees, which is to perpetuate itself.

Other Rockefeller Foundation 1928 expenditures went as usual to promote the development of medical knowledge by aiding schools of medicine, nursing and hygiene in various parts of the world (including 18 medical schools in 14 countries) and to promote public health by helping governments fight certain diseases (yellow fever in Brazil and West Africa, hookworm in 21 countries, malaria in the U. S. and elsewhere).

Synchronously with the creation of these huge public benefactions, John D. Rockefeller has been building himself a huge private estate at Pocantico Hills, N. Y. And that too brought him into the news last week.

To remove the nuisance of a New York Central suburban railroad which now runs past his Pocantico Hills estate, John D. Rockefeller Jr. (whose sole purpose in life is to perpetuate his father's "intentions") bought the entire village of East View. To habitants, some of whose families have lived there since Colonial times, he paid three to four times the assessed value of their properties, a total of $825,000. Last week the villagers were moving away and wreckers stood ready to demolish the place.

The Rockefeller intention is to divert the suburban railroad through the East View site and away from the estate fence. For that they have offered the New York Central $800,000. But the Rockefeller will in this case has not moved uncontested. Last week householders of Pocantico Hills and adjoining Tarrytown Heights, who do not work on the Rockefeller estate, bitterly complained to New York's Public Service Commission, who must approve the track removal, that they would have to walk to the new station. One oldster's plaint was that he would sorely miss "the tooting of the whistles and the sound of the engines on the old line." Despite objections it can be stated that the tracks will be moved.

This most famed of U. S. estates was open with few restrictions to visitors until 1913, when ruffians attempted to invade it as a demonstration against the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co.'s (a Rockefeller property; killings of miners. Since then dour guards command the two open gates (there are six all told) of the fenced-in part of the property.

Within this portion is the home, a three-story, high-gabled brick affair which John D. Rockefeller himself designed. It stands on a hill called Kyk-Uit, overlooking the Hudson River.

Nearby is the much larger $500,000 play-&-study house of John D. Rockefeller's children. It contains a swimming pool, gymnasium, handball court, dining room, billiard room, bowling alleys, study rooms. Tapestries, paintings and etchings soften the walls. It is the pride of the entire family.

The grounds John D. Rockefeller also laid out for himself. The country all about Pocantico Hills is wooded, hilly and full of waterways. Most of the 8,000 acres which comprise the estate have been little touched or fenced. Students of the many private schools in the neighborhood and the local householders ride through the woods at their pleasure--until they come to the spiked iron fence of the reserved section.

Those especially private grounds Mr. Rockefeller has parked expertly. There are wide rolling lawns, a nine-hole golf course, terraced and sunken gardens. Where his fancy has promised him pleasure he has moved watercourses, built ponds with dams and created watercourses. Throughout this park are the motor roads he has engineered himself. And those provide him especial delight. For swift motoring is one of the chief of the many things that he has found to give him pleasure during this last third of a long life.