Mum Money

Railroad Financier Arthur Curtiss James was one of the least-known philanthropists in the U.S.--if his beneficiaries blabbed that they were getting money, James took it back.* He secretly gave away some $20,000,000 before he died in 1941, but he was famous chiefly for his beard, his fancy for orchids and yachts, and his ownership of securities representing one-seventh of the railroad mileage of the U.S. An urbane fellow, James listed hirrlself in Who's Who as a "capitalist."

James's eleemosynary obscurity was shared by the foundation he chartered to run for 25 years after his death. Although the directors eventually lifted James's ban on publicity, the grants they handed out, $42 million all told, usually came in such small amounts (average: $55,000) that James Foundation donations were hardly noticeable compared to the fat checks regularly issued by giants like Ford and Carnegie. Last week, with the expiration of the charter only two years off, the James Foundation voted to dissolve itself. The foundation's manner of leaving was untypically spectacular: it gave away almost all of its principal of more than $96 million to 92 institutions. Grants of $1,000,000 or more went to 36 universities, museums, hospitals, philanthropies and religious organizations. Biggest gift: $5,500,000 to New York's Union Theological Seminary, long one of Presbyterian James's favorite causes.

* Just like Television Actor Marvin Miller on CBS's The Millionaire, who doled out $1,000,000 a week for 298 richly melodramatic weeks before the sponsor's money ran out in 1960.

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