WEALTH AND HEALTH

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 121, 24 May 1937, Page 8

WEALTH AND HEALTH

John Davison Rockefeller, whose death, at the age of 97, is reported from New York, did not achieve the ambition of his later years of living to be a hundred, but there was little else in life that he considered worth while that did not fall to his lot. From the humblest beginnings he became, before his retirement, the richest man in America, perhaps the richest in modern history. His fortune was estimated as high as a biHion dollars or over £200,000,000. If he was the world's wealthiest man, he was also, in the disposal of his wealth, the world's greatest benefactor. Up to the end of 1927 the amount of his gifts for philanthropic and charitable purposes was reckoned, conservatively, at over £100,000,000, and since then, it is believed, the total has been practically doubled.' Rockefeller devoted almost as much care to the problem of expending his vast fortune usefully as he did to that of making it. The first half of his long life was given to the

creation of the Standard Oil Trust, which rationalised the production, refining and marketing of America's immense oil resources, exploited wastefully and chaotically before he intervened, over sixty years ago. In those days of the battle of big business Rockefeller came in for a violence of opprobrium and vituperation that seems almost incredible today. The modern view, expressed by Wells and others, is that in introducing order into this field of industry, even if the methods employed were not above criticism, Rockefeller did America b and the world a great service. If in the course of gaining majority control of oil he made a huge fortune, Rockefeller showed by the way he used his wealth that he. regarded himself, as Carnegie did, as being in the position of a trustee for its wise utilisation. Thus the Rockefeller' Foundation was chartered in 1913 "to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world" and it cannot be denied that its funds have been applied, to the best of human capacity, to that purpose. Similarly with the other benefactions for medical research and education. The purpose of the father has been further promoted by the activities of his son, John D. Rockefeller, Jun., who has devoted many more millions to eminently useful objectives. Neither the founder of the Rockefeller fortune nor his children ever made any ostentatious show of wealth. The second, half of Rockefeller's life was a curious contrast to the first.-At fifty he was a dyspeptic wreck, the victim of ceaseless worry and overwork in maintaining and defending against attack the financial and industrial structure he had built up. He was told by his physician, t>r. Biggar, that he would have to alter his method of life completely if he wanted to live. So after interim period in" settling his affairs he Retired and devoted the rest of his life to his hobby of living as long as -he could. It is said that he made a bet with his; physician that he would live the nearer to a hundred. He won. The physician died at 87, Rockefeller at 97.,0n his f 96th birthday he gave out that his rules for health were simply: "Don't worry. Don't acquire overweight. Drink three quarts of water a day. Sleep in the open air." Actually he went further tiimself and lived on by a strict regime of diet' and habit. Ho lived happily enough and his end was peaceful. He. was a typical American of his day, with the virtues and defects' of his generation. His one romance centred in his wife to whom" he attributed his greatest happiness. He will rank among the founders of modern America.