PRINCELY GIFT.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19460, 6 November 1928, Page 7

PRINCELY GIFT.

TO UNIVERSITY OP SYDNEY.

MR BOSCH'S VIEWS ON WORK AND WEALTH.

(FBOU OUB OWS COBBESPOHDENT.) SYDNEY, October 25. When Mr George H. Bosch, a Sydney 1 business man, who is the soul of kindI ness, recently gave £220,000 to the Sydney University it brought the total of his gifts to that institution to £250,000. Ab a result of the latest gift the university will have a medical school that will rank with the most advanced in the world. The establishment of full-time chairs will mean a great change in the methods of training, and humanity in general will benefit. That being bo Mr Bosch will be satisfied, for the welfare of humanity seems to be his special desire. Since the generosity of Mr Bosch has received so much publicity, which he himself did not seek, he has been pestered by people begging financial help. I "I simply must get away," he said the i other day. "Since my big gift my life has been almost unbearable. My health

has broken down twice, and 1 don't want to risk another. I have received hundreds of letters asking for money from all manner of persons." For that reason Mr Bosch decided to go away for at least four months, and he has taken many of the appeals with him. He says that he will sift out the genuine cases. Already he has filled scores of waste paper baskets with letters which, he is convinced, were not genuine. Every time he went out into the street he was pestered by someone with a tale of woe or a madcap financial proposal. He simply had to get away from it all. Before he left he said that his doctrine was that a man who amassed wealth from a business that had prospered was no more than a trustee for that money. He was under a moral obligation to use it in some worthy cause that would help as many of his fellow-men as possible. He sincerely trusted that what he had done would prompt other wealthy men to do likewise. "Why should I hold a big accumulation of money?" he asked. "I will always have enough to buy a good cigar. And after all money is only money, and a good cigar is a smoke." Mr Bosch is a bachelor, 67 years of age, and his life hobby, his obsession, has been work. Most people think that he owns a million, but they are wrong. He is far from a millionaire, and his

latest gift represents far more than a mere fraction of his wealth. He has for years been distributing the wealth he amassed in a systematic way. He does not lend .money. He turned his business into a limited liability company, and gave it to his employees with a most liberal scale of earnings on their investments. "If more men of wealth would do this," he said, "instead of regarding a business as merely a well from which to draw dividends and profits that their employees give their lives in grinding out, there would be no need to talk about the menace of Bolshevism or the discontent of the masses. To me a business that prospers as mine has done is a means at my hand to do a vast amount of good. It- is an agency that puts me in a position of being able to give substantial help to worthy causes, such as education and medical research, reaching to the benefit of thousands." Referring to his own needs, he stated that £IO,OOO Jnvestedj say, at -Gjper cent. would return enough to satisfy his requirements. He could not eat more than he does now, and he can only wear one suit at a time. And once a man reached 70 his needs for. pleasure were slight. "My parents," said Mr Bosch, "were very poor. My father- never earned bore than 6s 6d a day as a quarryman who fed a stone-crushing machine. I served as a watchmaker's apprentice and eventually reached £3 a week. What to me was more pleasurable than amassing wealth was the prize of £3 3s that a watchmaker in Bourke street, Melbourne, gave me for a watch that I made for a technical exhibition in 1877. I always wallowed in work. I love it. For twenty years I worked from 8.30 in the morning until 10.30 I at night."