THEDEAD HAND

By

F. H. GOFF

THE DEAD HANDAN ADDRESS

DELIVERED AT HOTEL ASTOR, MAY 24,1921BEFORE THE NEW YORK ASSOCIATION

OF TRUST COMPANIES

byF. H. GOFF

~be<tle"elan~

1truat \tompan)?'

THE DEAD HAND

COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONS aimto provide a flexible plan for admin-istering charitable trusts. They are

designed to lessen the evil of "The DeadHand" by making property dedicated to aspecific charitable purpose available forother uses when the one designated bythe donor becomes harmful or obsolete.They provide that the wishes of the donorshall be respected no longer than seemswell to the committee having charge of thedistribution of income. Community Trustsrepresent at best a study, not a solution,of the difficult problems involved in theadministration of charitable endowments.

The importance of vesting a competentadministrative body with power to super-vise, reform, and if need be, extinguishunwise trusts, has been demonstrated to alimited extent in this country, but to agreater extent in England and ContinentalEurope. Time has shown that coupledwith the power to give there should be thepower to withhold when fraud or ineffici-ency is discovered, or when the use desig-nated ?~the donor becomes degrading orpauperIzmg.

The English Parliament possesses andhas often exercised this power. In earliertimes it confiscated land held by the mon-

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asteries and other religious bodies in mort-main, and more recently, acting both direct-ly and through a Charity Commissionappointed by it, has diverted funds toother uses than those indicated by thefounder. With the co-operation of theAttorney General, the Commissioners haveoften intervened to suppress fraud and tocorrect abuses in management. But thereare still thousands of Foundations in Eng-land which are harmful and devoid ofmerit.

Unfortunately no legislative body in theUnited States possesses this power. TheSupreme Court of the United States heldin the Dartmouth College Case that thelegislature of the State of New Hampshirehad no power to alter a charter granted bythe British Crown to the Trustees ofDartmouth College in any material respect.The original grant provided for a board oftwelve self-perpetuating trustees. Theamending Act passed by the legislature ofthat State, in 1816, increasing the Boardof Trustees to twenty-one (the additionalmembers being appointed by the Governor)and creating a Board of twenty-five over-seers (of whom twenty-one were to beappointed by the Governor), was held to bevoid because it impaired the obligation ofan implied contract between the State andthe founders when the charter was issued.Page Four

I shall quote somewhat at length fromthe opinion of the Court which was deliv-ered by Chief Justice Marshall. He saysthe original grant created

"an artificial, immortal being capable ofreceiving and distributing forever, accord-ing to the will of the donors, the donationswhich should be made to it. On thisbeing, the contributions which had beencollected were immediately bestowed.These gifts were made, not, indeed, tomake a profit for the donors, or theirposterity, but for something in theiropinion of inestimable value . . . Theconsideration for which they stipulatedis the perpetual application of the fundto its object, in the mode prescribed bythemselves . . . The corporation is theassignee of their rights, stands in theirplace and distributes their bounty, asthey would themselves have distributedit, had they been immortal. . . .

"According to the theory of the BritishConstitution, their Parliament is omnipo-tent. To annul corporate rights mightgive a shock to public opinion, which thatgovernment has chosen to avoid; butits power is not questioned. Had Parlia-ment, immediately after the emanation ofthis charter, and the execution of thoseconveyances which followed it, annulledthe instrument, so that the living donorswould have witnessed the disappointmentof their hopes, the perfidy of the trans-action would have been universallyacknowledged . . . This is plainly acontract to which the donors, the trusteesand the crown (to whose rights and obli-

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gations New Hampshire succeeds) werethe original parties. It is a contractmade on a valuable consideration . . .

"Almost all eleemosynary corporations,those which are created for the promotionof religion, of charity, or of education,are of the same character. The law of thiscase is the law of all. . . . It requires novery critical examination of the humanmind to enable us to determine that onegreat inducement of these gifts is the con-viction felt by the giver that the dispo-sition he makes of them is immutable. Itis probable that no man ever was, andno man ever will be, the founder of acollege,believingat the time that an actof incorporation constitutes no securityfor the institution; believing that it isimmediately to be deemed a public insti-tution, whose funds are to be governedand applied, not by the will of the donor,but by the will of the legislature. All suchgifts are made in the pleasing, perhapsdelusive hope, that the charity will flowforever in the channel which the givershave marked out for it. .

"The whole power of governing thecollege is transferred from trusteesappointed according to the will of thefounder, expressed in the charter, to theexecutive of New Hampshire.... Thewill of the state is substituted for the willof the donors in every essential operationof the college. . . . This may be for theadvantage of this college in particular,and may be for the advantage of literaturein general, but it is not according to thewill of the donors, and is subversive of

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that contract, on the faith of which theirproperty was given."

Justice Story rendered a concurring opin-ion from which I quote:

"A grant to a private trustee for thebenefit of a cestui que trust, or for anyspecial, private or public charity, cannotbe the less a contract because the trusteetakes nothing for his own benefit. . . .A private donation, vested in a trusteefor objects of a general nature, does notthereby become a public trust, which thegovernment may, at its pleasure, takefrom the trustee, and administer in itsown way. . . . The only authority re-maining to the government is judicial,to ascertain the validity of the grant, toenforce its proper uses, to suppress frauds,and, if the uses are charitable, to securetheir regular administration through themeans of equitable tribunals, in caseswhere there would otherwise be a failureof justice."

As I view it, the principle laid down inthis case will greatly increase our difficultiesin dealing with charitable foundations whenthey become obsolete, due to lapse of timeor changed conditions. To accomplishreforms in this country, appeals must bemade to courts of equity under the so-called cy-pres doctrine, to which I shallrefer later. If it has been difficult with theomnipotent power possessed by Parliamentto deal with endowments in England, itmust be very evident that it will be more

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difficult in this country in the absence oflegislative control.

The evil effects of "The Dead Hand" inEngland may be illustrated by referring totypical endowments where the evil is readilyapparent and by quoting opinions fromeminent men who have given the subjectcareful study.

Mr. Gladstone, in a speech delivered inthe House of Commons in 1863 on a billproviding for the taxation of charities, said:

"endowed charities often spring from merevanity and seldom from self-sacrifice.Thegreat majority of them were created, notduring the creator's life but by his will;and it seems undesirable to spend publicmoney in tempting men to try to immor-talize themselves as pious founders. Theonly true 'charities' are those which a mangives out of money which he might havespent upon himself."

In speaking of what he termed the smallercharities, he said:

"Three times have these Charities been thesubject of inquiry, and the Charity Com-missioners of Lord Brougham, the Poor-law Commissionersof 1834,and the Educa-tion Commissionersappointed some four orfive years ago, all condemned them andspoke of them as doing a greater amount ofevil than of good in the forms in which theyhave been established and now exist....Poverty is thus not only collected butcreated in the very neighborhood whencethe benevolent Founders have manifestlyexpected to make it disappear."

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Mr. Hare, in an address before the SocialScience Association of England in 1869,said:

"There seems to be a general concur-rence of nearly all who have considered thesubject, that whatever the value or utilityofendowments at the time of their creation,the watchful eye of some independentauthority is always necessary to preventtheir mischief and abuse. We are taughtby the universal history of endowmentsthat their administration has never cor-responded with the original design."

Courtney Kenny, in his work on "En-dowed Charities," to whom I am greatlyindebted for much of the information con-tained in this address, says:

"By a strange but familiar tendency ofhuman nature, the Trustee comes to regardhis trust as his property, and the bene-ficiary comes to regard his alms as hisright. The Foundation gathers abuses as aseaweed gathers damp. The carelessnessoftoday becomes the habit of tomorrow. Ill-timed parsimony creates a nuisance; ill-judged liberality degenerates into a job.

"The history of English law reform con-tains few examples of more persistent andunselfish zeal than the twenty years'struggle of Lord Brougham to carry outsuch an inquiry (relating to charitableendowments) in England. He brought thequestion before the House of Commons; hearoused the public mind by a 'Letter toSir Samuel Romilly' (in 1818)on the abuseof charities, which ran through twelve

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editions in sixmonths; and by a long seriesof Parliamentary efforts he obtained theappointment of four successive Commis-sions of Inquiry, which, in the emphaticwords of Earl Russell, destroyed manyflagrant abuses, detected the perversion ofa large amount of charitable funds, andled the way to those further inquiries andthose remedial measures of which we haveseen the commencement and the progress,but of which the consummation is yet tocome. His Commissions were at workfrom 1818 to 1837, and the result of theirinvestigations-the longest in duration andthe most prolific in facts of all Parliamen-tary inquiries-is embodied in thirty-eightfolio volumes, consisting of some twenty-five thousand pages, describing twenty-eight thousand eight hundred and eightyCharities (with an aggregate income oftwelve hundred thousand pounds), andcompiled at a cost of more than a quarterof a million pounds. . . ."

The efforts of Lord Brougham and others"culminated in 1876, in the completion bythe present Charity Commissioners, afterfifteen years of compilation, of their GeneralDigest of Endowed Charities - a trueDomesday Book of Foundations, repletewith priceless material for the historian,the jurist and the politician."

The perils which Turgot enumerates inhis article on Foundations in the Encyclo-pedie have been proved real by painfuland universal experience. But his sweepingpractical conclusion is no necessary conse-Page Ten

quence of his premises; and it is possible toadmit all the dangers he fears withoutaccepting the drastic remedy he recom-mends. We are compelled to concede tohim that many endowed charities are, bytheir very constitution, injurious; thatothers, by various social changes, have ulti-mately been rendered injurious; and that,even in the best, there is an inherenttendency to become worthless.

Sir Arthur Hobhouse, in his work on"The Dead Hand," says:

"How comes it that people are allowedthus to devote property according to theircaprices forever? To me it seems the mostextravagant of propositions to say that,because a man has been fortunate enoughto enjoy a large share of this world's goodsin this life, he shall therefore and for noother cause, when he must quit this lifeand can enjoy his goods no longer, beentitled to speak from his grave FOREVERand dictate FOREVERto living men howthat portion of the earth's produce shallbe spent....

"But of the greater Foundations, willanybody confidently assert that they pro-duce more good than evil? I will not dwellon the great alms-houses,such as St. Cross,which has been a stone of offence,perhapsfrom its founder's days, certainly fromthose of William Wykeham, until now.Take the Foundations for objects weshould all approve - for learning, andfor the tending of the sick. Has the stateof the great endowed hospitals of London

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been always satisfactory? Has, for in-stance, that of Bethlehem? We all knowthe contrary.

"Turgot cites the hospitals of the sickas among the most striking instances ofthe deadness of Foundations. Will anycontemporary of mine at Eton assert thatthe then state of the College was usefulor edifying? Will any contemporary ofmine at Oxford say that the Foundationsof Merton or Waynflete or Chichele werethen playing their part in the world?There may be times of awakened conscienceand active exertion, but the question iswhether rich Foundations derived fromprivate origin do not invariably gravitatetowards sloth and indolence? It is difficultto point to one instance of a privateendowment for learning achieving greatresults by itself alone. . . . It is notpossible to grasp too tenaciously theprinciple that Property is not the Propertyof the Dead but of the Living."

The moment that any religious bodiesbecame unpopular, the reigning Monarchshastened to confiscate their possessions.The first two Edwards found it easy andconvenient to strip the Templars. HenryV. dissolved all the alien Priories andseized their lands, to the great contentmentof his subjects. Cardinal Wolsey found nodifficulty in suppressing upwards of thirtyreligious houses to found his colleges atOxford and Ipswich. And Henry VIII.swallowed up the rest; first the lessermonasteries, then the greater, then thePage Twelve

Knights of St. John, and lastly the wholecategory of chauntries, guilds, priests,brotherhoods, obits, lamps and suchlike. Tomy mind this history is most impressive,and its moral is this: that the Englishnation cannot endure for long the spectacleof large masses of property settled tounalterable uses.

Foundations attaching endowments tothe holding and teaching of prescribedopinions are, if they are to be unalterable,the very worst kind of Foundations thatcan be conceived, for experience showsthat the opinions to which men haveattached property change and become ex-tinct (sooner or later according to theirdepth and force), and then you have adirect premium on profession without be-lief. But that which tends to corrupt thenoblest part of man, the very eye of thesoul, his perception of truth, is as evil athing as can be imagined.

The number of Foundations made tomaintain theological opinions in this coun-try is enormous. Some of the trust deedsare very minute as to the tenets to bebelieved. I quote from one which has beenquite recently in my hands. Those whobenefit by this Foundation are to believeand teach:

"The one only living and true God, theCreator and Upholder of all things; theScriptures of the Old and New Testament

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as the Word of God and the only rule offaith and practice; the doctrine of theTrinity, including the Deity and distinctpersonality of the Father, of the Son, andof the Holy Spirit; the doctrine of originalsin, and the entire depravity of humannature; eternal and personal election; par-ticular redemption; atonement for sin bythe death and sacrifice of Jesus Christ;justification by His imputed righteousnessthrough faith; the necessity of regenera-tion and sanctification of the Holy Spirit;of repentance towards God and faith inJesus Christ in order to salvation, and thefinal perseverance of the saints."

The conceit of some of the earlier foundersnow seems ludicrous. In 16~5Sir ThomasHunt directed "that ~d. apiece weekly inbread be given to six poor people whoafter service should come every Sabbathday to the stone where his father lays, andkneeling should say the Lord's Prayer, andpray to God for the King and Queen thenreigning over them." Norrice's charity atAll Saints' Church, Leicester, gave to forty-one poor people, on St. Bartholomew'sDay, 4d. each, who were to depart, glorify-ing God. The minister was to have 4d.for exhorting them, after the second lessonat evening prayer, "to praise God for hismercy in providing for the poor."

The Mosely Dole in Staffordshire direct-ed that there should be paid annually apenny apiece to all the inhabitants of thePage Fourteen

parish of Walsall and of the adjoining parishof Rushall.

The Charity Commissioners, in one oftheir first reports, said:

"We met with charitable foundationseverywhere in old urban districts; andeverywhere found their operation andtendency to be to create the misery theywere intended to relieve, whilst they didnot relieve all the misery they created. . . In Spital-fields they created a popu-lation born in charity, nursed in charity,fed in charity its life long, doctored incharity, and, after a wretched life, buriedin charity."

It was found in England that "closelyakin in character and effect to Doles areCharities for general gratuitous education-the indiscriminate distribution of mental,instead of tangible alms. . .. " The Com-missioners found that "indiscriminate gra-tuitous instruction has been demonstratedto be as invariably mischievous as indis-criminate almsgiving. The evil becamegreater in the case of schools which gratui-tously provided food or clothing for thechildren."

In continental Europe Foundling Hos-pitals were found to stimulate unchastityand to multiply illegitimacy and infanticide.It is said that in England the Dole createdmore paupers and the Foundling Hospitalsmore foundlings, than their resources couldrelieve. Charities to provide Marriage

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Portions were found to operate as a bribeto hasty and improvident marriages. In1860 it was estimated that Fifty ThousandPounds a year of Charity revenue werespent in payment of premiums to appren-tices, notwithstanding the fact that thepractice of going through apprenticeshiphad almost ceased.

Mter vast sums had been given in Eng-land to endow alms-houses, it was foundthat the aged could be cared for better andwith less expense by granting pensionsfree from any obligation of residence.

A Foundation attached to the FrenchWalloon Church at Canterbury, providedfor the payment of Forty Pounds annuallyfor reading a service according to theEnglish Ritual in the French tongue, to acongregation which was paid to listen butwhich could not understand what was said.

The Loughborough Charity was foundedin part to repair cause-ways and bridges.In time the canals and drains carried off allthe water, removing the need for either.

John Alleyn directed that' the scholars inthe school endowed by him should havedaily at their breakfast "a cup of beere"and at dinner and supper "beere withoutstint."It is said that over two thousand endow-

ments given for primary education in Eng-land were rendered useless when suchPage Sixteen

schools became supported by Governmentaid.

A parish in England possessing an endow-ment of upwards of Eight Hundred Poundsa year to provide for care of the poor, hada population in 1877 of forty-six, only fouror five of whom slept within the parishand none of whom could properly be desig-nated as poor.

Henry Smith in 16~6 established a Foun-dation to provide for his poor kindred. In1700 it relieved four; in 1868 at a cost of£6797 a year 41~, one-quarter of whomwere his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-nephews and nieces.The inspector reported that "some live uponthe gifts, and-he believed-neglected alto-gether, or followed carelessly, occupationsby which they might earn a living."

Kenny says that founders "who limitedso many of their pecuniary benefits, fromfellowships down to almshouses, to theresidents in particular localities, assuredlynever foresaw how completely the ties oflocality would be upset in your own dayby change in methods of transportation,which made possible the renter class livingwhere they pleased."

The same Henry Smith, to whom I pre-viously referred, in 16~6 provided that aportion of the income from his Foundationshould go to redeeming captives from

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pirates, but since 17~3 no captive has beenfound upon which it could be spent.

A tobacconist provided that the rent fromhis land be used to purchase snuff for oldwomen residing in the parish. Later itnot only ceased to be a residential districtbut snuff went out of fashion. Perhaps, un-der the cy-pres doctrine, a court of equitymight be required to direct that the incomewhich had greatly increased, owing to theenhancement in the value of the land, beused to provide cigarettes for old womenin a neighboring parish.

What use can now be made of WilliamBower's gift for teaching children how tocard, spin and knit, or of the funds thatDr. Richardson directed be given in prizesannually for the best piece of woolen orlinen cloth woven within three miles ofRipon, or of Lurgan's Foundation to supplyspinning wheels to spinsters.

The advance in medical science has rend-ered useless the many leprosy hospitalsthat have been built in England. Theabolition of imprisonment for debt hasrendered useless the large number of endow-ments to aid improvident debtors. Legalreforms have superseded ancient founda-tions created to assist prisoners in gaol, toprovide shrouds for those executed on thegallows, and to buy fire-wood to heatcounty prisons.Page Eighteen

The following are a type of foundationswhich illustrate the vanity of the donor andthe desire for posthumous fame:

Henry Greene of Melbourne in 1679provided that four poor women on everytwenty-first day of December be suppliedwith four green waistcoats, lined withgreen galloon lace; Thomas Gray of thesame place, in 1691, directed that therebe purchased annually for poor men andwomen coats and waistcoats of grey cloth.Edward Rose, in 1652, left land in trust,amongst other purposes, to preserve rosetrees on his grave. The bequest of Eliza-beth Townsend, in 1820, provided forthe payment of £3 yearly apiece to thechurches of Westbury and Warminister,in Wiltshire, that on the Sunday beforeMidsummer Day, there should be sungat the morning and afternoon service theanthem composed by her late husband'sgrandfather from the 150th Psalm.

Mr. Kenny, in summing up his review ofthe Foundations that have been rendereduseless by lapse of time, says: "We have noright to suppose that the sociology of ourown day has attained a degree of perfectionwhich will enable it to guide Founders tounerring schemes of charity. It may bedoubted if even our most confident chari-table projects will stand the test of time.". . . He expresses the opinion that no onecan "possibly predict that the way in whichhe has disposed of his property is that in

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which it will always produce ... a balanceof benefit, much less a maximum of good."It would seem to be in the interest of

humanity that some legislation be enactedor some scheme devised, which would makefunds given for trivial or useless purposes,available to relieve distress at least in timesof war, pestilence and famine. Whenhospitals endowed to care for those sufferingfrom tuberculosis, diphtheria, leprosy, small-pox, yellow or typhoid fever have beenrendered needless, and hospitals endowedto cure inebriates have been rendered use-less, as it is conceivable they all may bein time, the funds dedicated to these pur-poses ought to be made available to servemankind in other ways without the restric-tions, uncertainties, delays and expenseincident to court proceedings.If founders act with as little wisdom and

as much vanity and conceit in the futureas they have in the past, and the plans ofthose who do act wisely prove vain, the evileffects of the Dead Hand will operate inthe ages to come as they have in the past.

I have spent altogether too much timein discussing the evils that have grown outof irrevocable gifts to definite uses-evilsthat might be avoided, as I view it, if thegifts were made to Community Trusts orunder any other sort of a plan which givespower to the living to determine how in-Page Twenty

come may be used. What is the remedywhere this power is denied? In this countrywhere legislative control is impossible, re-course can only be had to courts of equityto select another use-one nearest relatedin kind to the purpose designated by thedonor. Unfortunately this remedy hasbeen found costly, inadequate and unsatis-factory. Courts properly feel bound byprecedent and judges are often too proneto continue the old activities.

The inadequacy of this relief may beillustrated by appeals that have been madeto the courts to reform or supervise chari-table trusts in England. The Schools In-quiry Commissioners found the Berkhamp-stead Grammar School still in Chancery,after having been there for a century and aquarter. In the meantime it had under-gone three decrees, five Master's reports,and fourteen orders in Chancery, notwith-standing which the buildings were foundin bad repair, and the schools in a languidcondition.

At Bosbury a suit to remove the masterof the Grammar School, to get an accountand to appoint new trustees, lasted twenty-three years and cost £1171, the schoolendowment being only £98 a year. AtStoke Prior, a charitable annuity of £10fell into arrears, a Chancery suit was in-

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stituted to recover the arrearage whichproved successful at a cost of £359 l~s. 6d.

In the Ludlow Charities the cost of bothsides amounted to £~0,9~9. Foxe's Alms-houses, possessing an income of £11 a year,became the subject of a suit in which £1015were paid as costs. At Ledbury,out of £9000borrowed for the improvement of St. Cath-erine's Hospital, £3974 7s. 9d. were spentin obtaining leave to raise the loan.

Because the expense and delays incidentto these proceedings were so burdensomeupon small charities, Parliament in 1860passed an Act giving the Charity Com-missioners concurrent jurisdiction withcourts of equity to appoint and removetrustees and to make cy-pres agreementsfor charities with limited endowments. Ithas been said that no other permanentCommission has ever proved so completelysuccessful.

It is possible that some relief may be hadby the appointment of similar Commissionsin this country but it would take many yearsto accomplish this, owing to the fact thatConstitutional amendments would be re-quired, at least in many states, to conferjudicial power without right of appeal in apurely administrative body. Experiencehas taught that the power of revision andsupervision of charities is not so much ajudicial as an administrative function.Page Twenty-two

Mr. Kenny says:"It is imperatively necessary that the

primary revising authority should not beregarded as a mere tribunal of reference,to which petitions for the reconstitutionof a Charity may be addressed by theTrustees, or even by outsiders; it must, asa branch of the executive government ofthe State, have full power of initiatingschemes of revision in all cases where itmay find that they are needed. This rightof initiative is essential, not merely toprevent the possibility of the powers ofrevision remaining entirely unexercised,but also to give their exercise a characterof completeness. Without it, the chari-ties can only be dealt with individually, asapplications happen to be made."

I am of the opinion that protection fromthe evils of the Dead Hand, as respectsendowments that may be created in thefuture, can be secured by the Legislaturesin the several states or by Congressionalaction where the charter was issued underfederal authority, enacting laws requiringregistration of charitable endowments andconferring upon a properly constitutedCommission full power to deal with endow-ments hereafter immutably dedicated todefinite and specific uses.

I have no doubt that our Legislatureshave power to enact such laws or that theeffect, if enacted, would be to vest in themthe same control and dominion over en-dowed charities possessed by Parliament.

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Believing, as I do, that an importantfunction of charity is to experiment inbenevolence and to pioneer the way in newfields of charitable endeavor, and as theusefulness is demonstrated, to pass theactivity over to the public to continue,Charity Commissioners should be forbidden,unless the purpose be manifestly vicious andharmful, to substitute a new scheme for theone indicated by the donor until sufficienttime has elapsed-say fifty years-to enablethe merit of the donor's scheme to be thor-oughly tested; and it must not be for-gotten that it often takes a long time todemonstrate the usefulness of an idea.

When I was a student in the Universityof Michigan, Prof. Langley, then occupyingthe Chair of Physics, demonstrated thatMr. Brush's idea that electricity could beutilized for commercial lighting was notmerely impractical, but impossible. It wasbut a few years later when the worldbroadly smiled when his brother, then incharge of the Smithsonian Institute, beganhis experiments in aviation with a heavier-than-air machine.It is but fair to the donor that a thorough

test be made of any idea in benevolence hewishes to have tried out. I would onlyurge that, if the donor's scheme provesworthless, a prompt and inexpensive methodbe provided for diverting the funds to suchPage Twenty-four

purposes as the then living trustees or theCharity Commissioners, under changed con-ditions, may deem most widely beneficial.It took England many centuries to learnhow to deal with her problems of theDead Hand. We ought early to find a wayto profit by her mistakes.

If Mr. Rockefeller was correct in thinkingthat "the only thing that is of lasting benefitto a man is that which he does for himself,"and that money that comes without effortis seldom a benefit and often a curse; ifMr. Carnegie was correct in saying that"the aim of the millionaire should be todie poor, and thus avoid disgrace"; if Mr.W. K. Vanderbilt was right in thinking that"inherited wealth is a big handicap tohappiness" and that "it is as certain deathto ambition as cocaine is to morality"-wealth must continue to flow in increasingvolume to charitable uses.

I am not unmindful that Mr. Rocke-feller's gift to the Rockefeller Foundationwas made in broad terms for the use ofmankind; nor of the splendid gifts madeby Mr. Carnegie, Mr. Harkness and Mr.Du Pont and others in recent years. Theygive promise of more intelligence beingshown in making gifts to charitable use inthe future, but it would be a mistake toassume that all donors will be as wise asthey.

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Conceit, vanity, love of ostentation, thedesire for posthumous fame-will be con-trolling motives with many in the future asin the past. Then too, it is doubtful if any-one will succeed in planning a scheme whichwill insure from within efficiency and pur-ity of its own working. There will be needfor bodies having the power of administra-tion the Charity Commissioners of Englandhad, to prevent mismanagement, extrava-gance and waste and to stimulate activity.

Mindful of our duties to future genera-tions and our responsibility to our own, wemust recognize the need for remedial legis-lation to defeat the Dead Hand. But manyyears, I fear, will be required to effect thislegislation. Fortunately, there is a method,in the meantime, to accomplish some ormost of its purposes, with respect to endow-ments henceforth created.

Every lawyer, every trust officer, everycitizen, should use his influence in persuad-ing donors creating charitable endowmentsto vest broad powers in their trustees todisregard the originally expressed preferenceregarding the purposes to which income maybe devoted, if in the course of years thosepurposes become obsolete or harmful. Inaccomplishing this result I am hopeful thatthe Community Trusts, established duringthe past seven years in some forty Americancities, may prove a helpful instrumentality.Page Twenty-aix

These Trusts or Foundations recognize,in the words of the New York CommunityTrust, "first, the element of certain andconstant change which is taking place inour social structure and in our viewpointwith respect to charity, and, second, thatthe charitable problems of each generationcan better be solved by the best minds ofthese generations than by the dead hand ofthe past." Supervised and safeguardedflexibility of distribution is assured by theterms of the instruments creating theFoundations. Competence and continuityin the management of funds is provided bythe selection of capable corporate trustees.And the public interest is protected andrepresented by the designation of a major-ity of the Committee of Distribution bypublic authorities.If the Foundations can measurably ful-

fill the purposes for which they are organ-ized, they offer a helpful agency near athand for making philanthropy more effec-tive and for cutting off as much as is harm-ful of the dead past from the living presentand the unborn future. Through theiroperation we may anticipate some degreeof relief from the withering, paralyzing,blight of the Dead Hand through the yearswhen no intellect remains to apply reasonand sympathy and discretion to the termsof antiquated fiats.

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