work of George Washington Carver. He helped to fight hookworm. When Dr. Charles W.
Stiles, the hookworm authority, said: "Fifty cents' worth of medicine will cure a man of
this disease which ravages the South-but who will give the fifty cents?" Rockefeller gave
it. He spent millions on hookworm, stamping out the greatest scourge that has ever
handicapped the South. And then he went further. He established a great international
foundation-the Rockefeller Foundation-which was to fight disease and ignorance all over
the world.
I speak with feeling of this work, for there is a possibility that I may owe my life to the
Rockefeller Foundation. How well I remember that when I was in China in 1932, cholera
was raging all over the nation. The Chinese peasants were dying like flies; yet in the
midst of all this horror, we were able to go to the Rockefeller Medical College in Peking
and get a vaccination to protect us from the plague. Chinese and "foreigners" alike, we
were able to do that. And that was when I got my first understanding of what
Rockefeller's millions were doing for the world.
Never before in history has there ever been anything even remotely like the Rockefeller
Foundation. It is something unique. Rockefeller knew that all over the world there are
many fine movements that men of vision start. Research is undertaken; colleges are
founded; doctors struggle on to fight a disease-but only too often this high-minded work
has to die for lack of funds. He decided to help these pioneers of humanity-not to "take
them over", but to give them some money and help them help themselves. Today you
and I can thank John D. Rockefeller for the miracles of penicillin, and for dozens of other
discoveries which his money helped to finance. You can thank him for the fact that your
children no longer die from spinal meningitis, a disease that used to kill four out of five.
And you can thank him for part of the inroads we have made on malaria and
tuberculosis, on influenza and diphtheria, and many other diseases that still plague the
world.
And what about Rockefeller? When he gave his money away, did he gain peace of
mind? Yes, he was contented at last. "If the public thought of him after 1900 as brooding
over the attacks on the Standard Oil," said Allan Kevins, "the public was much
mistaken."
Rockefeller was happy. He had changed so completely that he didn't worry at all. In fact,
he refused even to lose one night's sleep when he was forced to accept the greatest
defeat of his career!
That defeat came when the corporation he had built, the huge Standard Oil, was
ordered to pay "the heaviest fine in history". According to the United States Government,
the Standard Oil was a monopoly, in direct violation of the antitrust laws. The battle
raged for five years. The best legal brains in the land fought on interminably in what
was, up to then, the longest court war in history. But Standard Oil lost.
When Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis handed down his decision, lawyers for the
defence feared that old John D. would take it very hard. But they didn't know how much
he'd changed.
That night one of the lawyers got John D. on the phone. He discussed the decision as
gently as he could, and then said with concern: "I hope you won't let this decision upset
you, Mr. Rockefeller. I hope you'll get your night's sleep!"
And old John D.? Why, he crackled right back across the wire: "Don't worry, Mr.
Johnson, I intend to get a night's sleep. And don't let it bother you either. Good night!"