Breakfast Food Men

Will Keith Kellogg, 70, head of the vast breakfast food concern at Battle Creek, Mich., last week again belied the general impression that he is a dour moneymaker. He created the W. K. Kellogg Child Welfare Foundation, gave it $1,000,000 for immediate use, provided for a total of $50,000,000 if & when needed.

Principal purposes of the Kellogg Foundation are to segregate physically and mentally impaired children, to remedy their shortcomings, to bring them to the highest possible point of efficiency by applying latest scientific and medical treatment. Among directors of the Foundation is Lewis J. Brown, president of Mr. Kellogg's Kellogg Co. and a leader of the American Management Association. Foundation medical superintendent is Dr. James Stuart Pritchard, 48, Canadian-born lung specialist, long in charge of the chest department of the Battle Creek Sanitarium which Businessman Will Keith Kellogg's famed brother Dr. John Harvey Kellogg operates.

The Brothers Kellogg have long disagreed on the immediate use of wealth. Nearly 30 years ago John Harvey invented a precooked breakfast food. The brothers manufactured it together. When its sales earned them big money, Dr. John Harvey insisted on spending the money on sociological activities--child welfare, public health, race improvement. Will Keith insisted on letting the business amass a fortune before giving the money away. His viewpoint was that business should be the benefactor of society. His brother's view was that business should be the servant of society. Their ultimate purpose was the same--giving away their fortunes.

Impatient, Dr. John Harvey wanted to supervise his own benevolence. He sold his interest in the food concern to Will Keith for almost a quarter of a million dollars, and almost at once founded the Race Betterment Foundation (1906). A more intimate good deed was his legal adoption of 14 orphans and his complete support of some twoscore more. The profits of his profitable Battle Creek Sanitarium go to such works (TIME, Jan. 18, 1926).

Dr. John Harvey made himself more famed than his business (the Sanitarium) and his benefactions. Brother Will Keith made his business (Kellogg Co.) more famed than himself. The public knows practically nothing about him. Employes of the Kellogg Company have stern orders against exploiting him. Servants of the Kellogg Inn at Battle Creek, his legal residence, dare not talk. Dr. Carrie S. Staines Kellogg, 63, his second wife, who practices at Battle Creek, minds her own patients, not his business. Nor is there much small talk about him at Pomona, Calif., where he is breeding the largest registered herd of Arabian horses in the U. S. Hence his public reputation for dourness.

With such deliberate avoidance of publicity he has produced a cascade of philanthropies this year, which probably (it is impossible to calculate) surpasses the volume of Brother John Harvey's. To Michigan State College of Agriculture & Applied Science he gave his experimental farm near Gull Lake, Mich., and his wild life sanctuary at Wintergreen Lake, Mich. He endowed both for 999 years.

He bought a farm on a lake not far from Battle Creek to make a summer home for underprivileged children. For the same sort of children he is helping Battle Creek build a $500,000 Ann J. Kellogg school (Ann Jeanette Kellogg was his mother). Early in October before President Hoover roused the country for unemployment help, he put his Battle Creek factory on a five-day-a-week basis to employ 300 more men. The factory has been running 24 hours a day, in three eight-hour shifts, for 2,500 employes. Last fortnight he altered his factory schedule again. To hire still more men, he now runs four six-hour shifts daily. He also increased wages to give every employee at least $4 a workday.

A quirk in the culture of the Kellogg family is this: Both brothers have created long-enduring benefactions; yet when they were young children their parents did not want them to go to school. The parents believed schooling was unnecessary because they were morally sure the world then (about 65 years ago) was going to end.

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