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Show WILL GIVE AWAY SlO,000,OOO. To Devote His Life to Aid Deserving Charities. (Waverley (Kan.) Cor. St. Louis Republic.) Abraham Slimmer, the wealthiest man in tiiis part of Iowa, who will devote de-vote the remainder of his life to giving away a fortune of $10,000,000, is a remarkable re-markable man in many respects- He has pronounced ideas on how his money is to be expended, and will not deviate from a well defined course in this respect. While discussing plans for benefiting the needy, he reached from the shelf in his desk a large package of formidable looking papers. He gloated over them as a miser would over his deeds, mortgages mort-gages and bonds. "These are my contracts con-tracts .'with hospitals and old people's homes," he said, "and I drive hard bargains with them. My conditions are exacting. I draw my own contracts; I never allow a lawyer to do it. They would fill them with law. I fill them with facts, and often the boards of directors di-rectors of the institutions I aid employ lawvers to trv to hrenk flmvn some of my conditions and fool me into waiving waiv-ing some of my rights, but they never do. "Now, here is a contract with an old people's home; I gave them $50,000. and they raised the same amount. Here is a clause that they shall not ask any inmate to attend worship. The reason? Suppose a Catholic priest wants to have worship in the institution; if the old- folks are asked to attend they may not like to refuse, and as old folks are' often quite bigoted in their religion, what is said might offend them. They will know that the service is to be held, and if they desire they will attend. Here is another clause which says that one inmate shall not pay more than another. Each is to nave what he or she needs, and it shall' cost the 'same for all. I will not have an aristocracy build up among my old friends which is sure to hurt the feelings of those who cannot pay for what some one else gets. Then there is one which provides that no contribution box shall be placed in or about the institution, or at any other place for its benefit. I will not have my old friends feel that they are dependent depend-ent on charity. They must feel that there is money there that is theirs, and that they are not dependent on any form of charity. "If we are to help them, can we do it better than by making them feel that it is their home, and the money which supports it is their money? And the miserable, contemptible verses that are so often seen pasted on those contribution contri-bution boxes. 'Giving to the poor is lending to the Lord,' and the like! At every turn they are reminded of their poverty. "Here is a contract with a hospital; I gave them $50,000, and they at first raised the same amount, when a few weeks before they told me they could not raise $2,000 to keep the little hospital hos-pital they had from being abandoned. Later thev raised another ISO 0(1(1 and it is now a rich Institution. My conditions condi-tions were hard, and they fought me for months over them, but they feel differently now. I provided that the building should cost $25,000, and the remaining $75,000 should be placed in a permanent fund, which I named after the widow of an ex-governor of the state, solely because she was a good woman. She had not a dollar to give. Then I provided that every patient who had no money should be paid at the rate- of $7 per week out of this permanent perma-nent fund. If there were no poor patients, pa-tients, they got none of the fund. "Now let me tell you why I did ,this. I went to Chicago one day to look over a, hospital which had asked me for help, on the ground that they -were doing do-ing much charity work. I found that the charity patients had an average stay in the hospital of thirteen days and . two hours. Later I visited vis-ited the Sisters of Mercy hospital hos-pital in Dubuque, "where the charity patients were paid for by the city." I found there that the charity patients had an average stay of over five weeks. On a closer inquiry in Chicago Chi-cago I learned that the sick poor were hustled about from one hospital to another, an-other, and everywhere were turned out as soon as possible, and often long before they were well. I wanted the hospital to have an incentive for keeping the poor as long as they were too sick to help themselves. . "Then, again, I found often that there were men and women who preferred pre-ferred to die outside in abject poverty rather than feel their dependence depend-ence on charity. In providing that fund it was possible for the hospital people to make them feel that they were actually conferring a favor on the institution in coming there. Why? Because Be-cause it would get no money unless it earned it. So these poor fellows were made to feel good about it, and were correspondingly happy. "Begging letters?" he repeated, in answer to tne question. xes, l get thousands of letters of all kinds letters let-ters asking me how I work my charities; chari-ties; letters telling me that I ought to have a helper, and winding up with some good woman offering tb marry me; others ask for information for every ev-ery conceivable purpose; some offering me money for my work. "But it is not through letters that I find out what to do. I go into a town, attracted perhaps by a little item in a paper. One time I went into a town and found there was an old woman's home where the inmates were placed two in a small room that had to be chalked across to keep the occupants from quarreling. They asked me to buy a quilt, as they were having to make and sell things or close the institution. in-stitution. I refused to buy the quilt, because I could not see any good that money would do, but I hunted up 'the richest man in the town and told him that if he and his neighbors would raise $50,000 I would give the same. He laughed at me, and said the thing was utterly impossible; that they had been trying to raise $1,500 for two years and had only half of it. I talked to him for half an hour, and he gave $10,000 himself and got the other $40,000 in twenty-four hours." "How did Mr. Slimmer make all those millions in a little town like this?" you may ask a business man of Waverly. "He made it by hard, shrewd work," he will tell you. "He bought, fed and sold cattle; he bought and sold land, and he was in the lumber business. busi-ness. But he was a clear headed, close bargaining business man, and If he buys or sells anything today he will make it a business engagement; that is a part of his creed." "I am of Jewish origin," he said in answer to me question, uui " follow the Jewish religion. I am a single man. That is also part of my philosophy. Those who say they marry mar-ry because they conceive it to be a duty and bring children into the world for tha same reason are hypocrites. That is enough on that subject. I was born seventy-three years ago in Germany, Ger-many, and for the first seven, years grew as any other child. For the next seven years I was sent to school and learned to sing hymns about God and the emperor. Then I came to America, lived for ai. few years in Illinois, and came her, where I have lived, ever since. I have made a lot of money. Everything I did seemed to make me more money. Now I would not step across the street JCor $1,000,000 unless it was to give It at once to the poor. I want no more of it. A room and $3 a week are all that I want personally. I do not believe there is a. man living who will say that every cent I have ever made was not made fairly and with every consideration for others." Mr. Slimmer is now, aa he says, 73 years of age, but he looks' fully as young as the photograph indicates. He is a small man, perhaps five feet seven inches, and weighs 130 pounds. He Is inseparable from his hat and never changes the style. He cares little for dress, and wears a $12 suit, with old-style old-style boots. Besides his "work" his hobby is old people and old friends. Among the later he numbers "Turk," as rascally an old horse, grown fat and sleek on the best the land affords, as one will meet in a day's journey. He had a little " crop-eared dog, whose death a year ago is still the signal for a solemn face on the part of the master. mas-ter. Mr. Slimmer has many plans for the future. He has just begun to give money away, he says. Some of his plans concern Chicago; he will not discuss dis-cuss them except in a general way. But wherever he goes, and whatever j he does, it will be taken for granted that some conditions will be main- j tained. "I do not make hard and fast conditions condi-tions with the sisters," he says, "because "be-cause they devote their lives to their work, perform the labor of the institutions insti-tutions with their own hands, and can make an institution pay where salary-drawing salary-drawing peoifle would fail. They are honest and earnest, and if their religion re-ligion is narrow, according to my way of thinking, they are earnest in it and believe in it. "I do not make hard rules with Jewish Jew-ish institutions, because I have found that, as a people, they are charitable and broad-minded in their charity, and they take pride in maintaining a high standard for their charges. I looked very carefully in.o that before I aided j the old people's homes in Chicago, and I can trust them. But the Protestants are mostly hypocrites. They are the ones who have hired lawyers to cheat me out of some of my conditions, and they have some selfish purpose in view when they work for a charitable institution, insti-tution, and many of them use their religions re-ligions as a part of their stock In trade. I make close bargains with them. "I will not have women in the directories direc-tories of the institutions I help to start I do not care for a few. but I will not have them given any part of the management of the affairs. They ae sympathetic and emotional, but they cannot do- anything without getting get-ting up factions and quarrels, and they put their personal friends in fat positions posi-tions if they can. And last of all, I 1 will not give anything to institutions that can get along without me. I prefer pre-fer to start something myself something some-thing that would not be started without with-out me. I can find enough to do even with all these conditions, so my business busi-ness will not suffer for want of patronage." |