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.