DISPOSING OF TWO HUNDRED SEVENTY-FIVE MILLIONS.
By T.
It is stated on what seems to be good authority that Mr. Andrew Carnegie has about $275,000,000 that he desires to dispose of in some useful or charitable way before he dies. A recent issue of a New York daily presented some of the suggestions that different people have made through the paper as to the best way of doing this. Among the suggestions is the idea of buying up large tracts of unoccupied land, and relieving the tenement-house evil by moving the people upon farms. This is a very practical suggestion, but the New York editor thinks there are some insurmountable difficulties in the way. He says these tenement-house people are not farmers, to which it can be replied that many of them can be taught to farm. He says that many of them could not be induced to leave the city; but, it is replied, there are many others who would gladly go. He states further that there is a demand in the city for the tenement-house laborer; and if you remove the present lot to the country, another would come to take their place, and so the evil would not be abated. And it is replied, If some of these powerful masters in the field of industry and trade would apply themselves to the work of overcoming this difficulty, they would not find it harder to accomplish than many things they have had to surmount in building up their colossal industries. The one thing needed is to get some of these men who have achieved such unparalleled success to undertake it, and then it will be found that every difficulty will be promptly met. And unless these men of such vast wealth do turn their affections as well as their minds to the work of resolutely-relieving the distresses of the poor, they will soon find themselves involved in the terrible struggles of their own absolute ruin.