FOURTEEN KINDLY MILLIONAIRES.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3355, 3 January 1927, Page 7

FOURTEEN KINDLY MILLIONAIRES.

fURVLUS WEALTH FOR THE PUBLIC. Fourteen of the richest men in San Francisco, whose combined wealth is estimated at £20.000,000, met in that city recently to devise the best means of spending their sun)]us wealth for the benefit of the general public. The call for the first meeting of the “combine” was issued by Charles W. Merrill, metallurgical engineer; William H. Crocker, banker; Mortimer Fleischhacker, banker and member of the Board of Regents of the University of California.; Paul Slump. railway executive and member of the Board ot Trustees of Stanford University; and Clay Miller, merchant and former president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. The general object in view is the giving of the surplus wealth of the city’s richer families for the future benefit of the whole community. Each of the members of the new organisation will make specific) gifts' of charitable, educational. and other purposes, and a self-perpetuating board of trustees will bo formed to handle bequests by members. The fourteen millionaires who met in answer to the first call appointed i.*r Merrill chairman, with instructions to make a careful studv of the Rockefeller and Russell Sage foundations and all other leading community funds operating in American cities. Details of the organisation will bo perfected at a meeting this month.

In some remarks recording the work of the Auckland Hospital Board, Mr K. Hewitt, a member of the board, said the annual fees would amount to £IOO,OOO if all the patients paid, but it was expected £30,000 would be collected or about 6/- in £. Xo one was forced to pay who could not pay, but, on the other "hand, those able to pay would not be allowed to shirk their responsibilities.