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whenever these robber barons so-called robber barons of the late nineteen century whenever someone writes about them or talks about
them they seem to forget look how many universities rockefeller founded
his idea was you make as much money as you can
you know cutthroat businessman absolutely would do whatever he could to knock you down so he
would get the profit but his idea was you don't leave a penny on the table when you go you
give it all away
he founded the university of chicago wonderful institution rockefeller university spelman
college
%uh constantly constantly %uh bankrolling great great cultural institutions of the day
carnegie in the public libraries j_p_ morgan in the metropolitan museum of art in new york
these are things we wouldn't have cultural institutions wouldn't have the government
didn't didn't do this these men and it was mainly men at this time these men did it they thought
it was a civic responsibility
%um and we've lost a little of that too i think %uh the percentage of income
that a rockefeller gave dwarfs that of our great magnates today the gates' and the buffett's
they should give as much i mean they should i'm saying that in a subjunctive sense not
like they should but they should only do it I'm not giving them
advice heavens
Ray Bradbury the science fiction writer writes so eloquently and speaks with such heartfelt longing about the great public library at waukegan illinois
just north of chicago in my hometown Huntington West Virginia the great carnegie library with names
you know these marble palaces names etched around the side you know shopenhauer and
goethe and shakespeare and milton and pope
the idea that you could be in a small town west virginia and have that as your example there's
a great
line of Aristotle learning adorns riches and softens poverty %uh that was the great idea and that's
what carnegie we wouldn't we wouldn't have that were it not for these libraries and by the
way none of this is to say that
these people didn't also do a lot of evil in amassing their riches because they
did
%um but like everything else two sided
but on the other hand they also went to church on sunday there was rockefeller everyday every
sunday sitting there in the pew taught sunday school as did his son
and I don't think they would've thought of themselves as hypocrites in fact they didn't ron chernow's
great biography of rockefeller Titan makes that clear he has a wonderful introduction
where he said rockefeller wasn't sitting there saying oh I'm such a hypocrite here I am in church
and on monday morning I'm gonna go put some poor shmo out of business it wasn't like
that he saw it as all of a piece
he saw life as all of a piece
you worked hard you played hard you gave a great deal