Unprofitable Bequests

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 23, 1882

Unprofitable Bequests.

THERE lately died in New Haven, Conn., a man whose benefactions cheered his last years and will keep his memory green through many generations. This was Mr. Sheffield, who did more than any other man to make scientific education a practical success at Yale College. He gave the movement toward the new education a powerful impulse long before it had gained any general recognition, and for nearly forty years he furnished a large part of the means to carry on the work. To this college and to other institutions the amount of his gifts was over $650,000. He enjoyed, in common with Peter Cooper and a small number of our practical philanthropists, the spectacle of the good results of his liberality.

The great trouble with most of the wealthy men in this country is that they cling to their coin until death comes. Then they leave provisions in their wills for many charitable purposes. The result generally is that the larger the fund the smaller the amount of actual benefit derived from it. It passes into the hands of a board of trustees, who draw fat salaries and seem to be mainly exercised about prolonging their term of office.

Stephen Girard left a great estate, with very minute instructions for its disposition; but there is no question that had he begun the construction of his college while still alive he would have seen the absurdity of attempting to adapt classical architecture to a modern educational institution in as inclement a latitude as Philadelphia. Ezra Cornell founded a college at his home in Ithaca, N. Y., looked after the carrying out of his plans, and lived to see the institution recognized as the equal of those which had been started a half-century before. It may be that his design would have been executed as well by other hands; but he believed in personal influence, and the result showed the wisdom of his choice.

Many Girards have lived in our day, and a conspicuous example flourished on this coast. His will revealed many noble bequests to education and charity, but not one-half of its provisions have yet been carried out, and he has been in his

grave nearly ten years. It may be that the dead man would have approved of the manner in which his bequests have been allowed to remain unapplied, but the chances are that a little personal supervision would have had a stimulating effect. Every year that a bequest languishes in the meshes of the law is a dead loss to the public, although profitable to those who have it in charge. --S. F. Chronicle.