CAVE AWAY FORTUNE

Waikato Times, Volume 96, Issue 15061, 7 October 1922, Page 7

CAVE AWAY FORTUNE

* $ STRANGE OASE OF CHAS. GARLAND.

The newspapers are full of reports of Charles Garland and his million dollars (writes the New York correspondent of the Manchester Guardian). Garland is a young Harvard man who startled his neighbours two years ago by calmly announcing that he did not want the inherited million dollars which became his right upon reaching his twenty-first birthday. The papers were crowded with interviews and alleged interviews with Garland in which dazed reporters attempted to set forth his views on property. Later it was reported that lie had decided to accept the million after all, that he would give it to his wife or to various friends; then these reports were denied. After an interval the newspaper clamour rose again when Garland separated from his wife and went to live unconventionally in his Cape Cod shack. Now it is announced that, he has finally transferred some 800,000 dollars of his inherited fortune, to flic American Fund for Public Service, a corporation recently formed to receive such gifts as his and to expend them upon experimental movements which do not receive conservative, support. Garland belongs to an old New England tradition. In his generation he represents the spirit which sent Bronson Alcott and his followers to their vegetarian farm at Harvard, Massachusetts, 80 years ago, Henry David Thoreau to his hermit camp at Walden, and maintained Brook Farm as a centre for New England transcendenlalisls, the “cranks" of their day. lie is a simple, direct, intensely, serious young man; he is so profoundly concerned about his theories of life that he is perfectly ready to talk about them to any person who seeks him out, be lie a friend, a farmer neighbour, or a stupid sensation-seeking reporter for a metropolitan newspaper. He wants to live simply and alone on his farm. He wears old clothes, cooks his own food, tills the soil, and is building a new farm building with his own hands. He sees no reason why the million dollars should have come to him and him alone; he does not care for a society in which it is possible for one man, by no virtue of his own, to inherit a million dollars while his neighbour remains poor; and he does not think that the million dollars ought to belong to him. Some of his relatives tell him that; by fortune or misfortune, the responsibility for its expenditure is his, and that'he ought not to unload this responsibility upon others. This he has seriously considered, but finally he has determined, after settling a considerable sum upon his wife, to turn over the balance to a group of chore or less Radical friends centring about Roger Baldwin, one of the best-known of. American conscientious objectors, now director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “For the Benefit of IVfankind.”

In his letter lo Baldwin announcing his decision Garland thus explained his purposes:

“It is my desire that through the fund the money be turned over to individuals and lo groups of individuals. These shall be trusted lo use it to the benefit of mankind —to the benefit of poor as much as of rich, of black as much as of white, of foreigners as much as of citizens, of so-called criminals as much as the unepndemned. They shall be trusted not to use \l to the advantage of one individual as opposed lo another, of one group as opposed Lo another, of one class or one nation as opposed to another. The members of the "fund shall decide what individuals and what groups to trust with this commission, and they shall decide the amount of principal or interest to be entrusted to each individual or each group. They shall not attempt by promise or by the betting forth of conditions or by any other means to control the policy of any group or individual entrusted with this money or a part of this money. I make this outline not so much to limit the use of the money as to express the purpose which we, including all the members of the Board, have at heart. I wish you would talk this over with them and find out if this outline Is satisfactory lo each and let me know of any suggestions that may be made to improve it."

That letter expresses Garland’s simple, modest spirit. Of course the newspapers have made fun of him and of the fund. Although only one of the ten directors lives in the Greenwich Village Bohemian colony, they have been labelled “Villagers” from the start. It is assumed that they must be cranks. The list includes, in addition to Baldwin, a former clean of the University of Chicago, a prominent settlement worker, a Radical trade union leader, a Jewish rabbi, two Protestant ministers, two or three editors of Liberal weeklies, a former university professor, and the secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. Beyond the bare announcement that the funds will go to “experimental” agencies for social betterment which cannot expect support from the conservative foundations now in existence, there has been no indication of the uses to which the money will be put. It may be assumed from the personnel of the directors, however, that such causes as civil liberties, the anti-lynching campaign, and workers' education will be among those which will profit.