The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

492 chapter 47Endowment for International Peace, and to that library in Wakefield, Massachusetts,where I first read the anticapitalist classics. “Has AndhrewCarnaygie given ye a libry yet?” asked Mr. Dooley. “Not that I know iv,” saidMr. Hennessy.“He will,” said Mr. Dooley.“Ye’ll not escape him.” 9 Notice thatyou have not heard of a Carnegie line of millionaires. It vanished with themillions. So of course did the British Rothschild give some of his fortuneaway, though less proportionately than did Carnegie. You have heard of aRothschild line.You’ve also heard of Carnegie-Mellon University. The other half is fromAndrew Mellon, another of those wretched robber barons, who gave his artcollection and the first building for the National Gallery in Washington, andpart of the rest of his fortune to the Mellon Foundation, for the bettermentof college professors. Collis Huntington of Central and Southern Pacificfame gave millions to Tuskegee and Hampton Institutes and his art collectionto the Metropolitan Museum. His nephew and heir, the interurbanking Henry Huntington, gave his rare book collections to the HuntingtonLibrary, delighting again generations of college professors.J. P. Morgan gave freely to the Metropolitan and other causes during hislife and in his will. In the words of Jean Strouse, a recent biographer, “Hewas essentially in business importing financial capital to fuel the growingAmerican economy [for example, he financed Edison’s light] and in his offhourshe was also importing cultural capital, basically stocking America’slibraries and museums with the great treasures of the past.” 10 Carnegie’shenchman Henry Frick—whose last message to his former boss was “TellMr. Carnegie I’ll see him in hell, where we both are going”—gave awaythe Frick Collection in New York and most of the rest of his $50 millionfortune.Old John D. Rockefeller gave gobs and gobs of money away, as a devoutBaptist who raised his son and by proxy his five grandsons to a gospel ofpublic service. He gave away $500 million, many billions in present dollars.But it was not every dime he had. He needed to keep some to distribute tochildren for the newsreel cameras, advised to do this by his PR man. Andunlike Carnegie, he did give large sums to those grandsons, and to a granddaughterin whom the gospel of wealth did not shine.George Soros, who was in 2002 worth $6 billion, plans to give it all awayby 2010. The Gates Foundation gives away about as much as Soros’sentire fortune every year. In 2004 Gates gave away to his foundation all the