Harkness Gifts

The Southern Pacific is proud of many things, of its new cars kept cool in Southwestern deserts by special aluminum paint and anti-actinic window glass, of its freight service, so efficient that a carload of potted lilies recently went through without a pot broken or a single flower crushed. But its hospitals have long been its especial pride. Most roads maintain a staff of nurses and doctors with emergency stations at important terminals. Only three roads have their own hospitals: the Illinois Central, at Chicago, the Central of Georgia, at Savannah, and the Southern Pacific, at San Francisco (250 beds) and at Houston (125 beds). Last week Edward Stephen Harkness, good angel of many a school and hospital, gave $600,000 to the Southern Pacific to add a wing to the San Francisco hospital and to build a tuberculosis sanitarium at Tucson, Ariz.

Among Harvard men a story is told. One day last year an unobtrusive man was shown into the office of President A. Lawrence Lowell in University Hall. Like a caged lion, the President was pacing back and forth and round and round, hands clasped in back. His visitor seated himself quietly in a corner, holding an umbrella. At length the President emerged from his cogitation: "What can I do for you?" "Have you ever considered the English house system here at Harvard?" asked the unobtrusive man. "Yes . . . too expensive." "How much?" "Oh, about three million dollars to begin it." The visitor fished a checkbook out of his pocket, wrote out a check, passed it to President Lowell. The President looked in bewilderment at the signature: "Edward S. Harkness." Harkness? Harkness? "Why, thank you. . . . Ah, could you lunch with me?" he finally asked. "I'm very sorry, but my wife is shopping in Boston and I have promised to meet her. Good morning. . . . By the way, if the plan costs more, let me know how much." The unobtrusive man nodded pleasantly and went out. Months later, the "how much" proved to be $10,000,000 which ultimately Yaleman Harkness gave to Harvard (TIME, Jan. 7).

Though the story may be apocryphal in detail, it well suggests the temper of Harkness giving. His frequent and princely donations to education and charity have always been unobtrusive, modest. In philanthropy he does not bunch his hits as do the Rockefellers, but scatters gifts of $100,000 or more to dozens of causes and institutions. Sometimes he gives to institutions he has never seen. Though the complete listing of the Harkness benefactions would stretch over columns, these are representative, most of them recent:

$ 1,000,000 College of Physicians & Surgeons (Columbia Univ.).

4,000,000 (land) N. Y. Medical Centre (with mother, Mrs. S. V. Harkness).

1,000,000 New York Public Library.

1,000,000 Yale University (Drama School).

100,000 Wellesley College.

1,250,000 Union Theological Seminary.

400,000 Year's work in community mental hygiene.

300,000 N. Y. Botanical Gardens.

1,000,000 Cleveland Hospital Drive.

250,000 Memorial Hospital (to purchase radium for treatment of cancer).

50,000 Boy Scouts.

200,000 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre.

250,000 Colgate University.

500,000 Taft School.

200,000 Museum of City of New York.

320,000 Phillips Academy at Exeter.

320,000 Phillips Academy Andover.

20,000 Southern Storm Relief.

250,000 Albany, N. Y. Medical College.

13,000,000 Harvard University (House Plan).

200,000 College of Women of Western Reserve University (Endowment Fund).

150,000 Neurological Institute of N. Y.

2,000,000 N. Y. Medical Centre (Student Dormitory).

But the Southern Pacific is neither a hospital nor a college. It is easy to understand why the gift was made. Though Mr. Harkness is a director of eight railroads, he has long had a penchant for the Southern Pacific. Of each and every year he spends a part inspecting the road. Many of the employes he knows by face and name. He once remarked that his three dominant interests were "the great West," "railroad companies," and "helping to better medical education." There could be no more logical focus for these three interests than the Southern Pacific hospital. The causes of the gift are obvious, but its effects may not be so simple. A director and member of the executive committee of the Southern Pacific, Mr. Harkness nonetheless seems to regard the road as something more than a source of dividends. For a businessman to make donations to his company (which may exceed a year's dividends from his holdings), for a man of wealth to help a business concern as if it were a college or hospital--these are new departures in philanthropy.