So composite, however, is the human character, so crossed and seamed by conflicting influences, that at no time is it easy to draw any absolute line between motives. Merely because he exploited his employees mercilessly, and cheated the public treasury out of millions of dollars, it does not necessarily follow that Field was utterly deficient in redeeming traits. As business is conducted, it is well known that many successful men (financially), who practice the most cruel and oppressive methods, are, outside the realm of strict business transactions, expansively generous and kind. In business they are beasts of prey, because under the private property system, competition, whether between small or large concerns, is reduced to a cutthroat struggle, and those who are in the contest must abide by its desperate rules. They must let no sympathy or tenderness interpose in their business dealings, else they are lost. But without entering into a further philosophical disquisition, this fact must be noted: The amounts that Field gave for "philanthropy" were about identical with the sums out of which he defrauded Chicago in the one item of taxes alone. Probed into, it is seen that a great part of the sums that multimillionaires have given, represent but a tithe of the sums cheated by them in taxes. William C. Schermerhorn donates $300,000 to Columbia University; the aggregate amount that he defrauded in taxes was much more. Thus do our magnates supply themselves with present and posthumous fame gratuitously. Not to consider the far greater and incalculably more comprehensive question of their appropriating the resources of the country and the labor of hundreds of millions of people,[186] and centering attention upon this one concrete instance of frauds in taxes, the situation presented is an incongruous one. Money belonging to the public treasury they retain by fraud; this money, apparently a part of their "honestly acquired" fortune, is given in some form of philanthropy; and then by some curious oversetting of even conventional standards, they reap blessings and glory for giving what are really stolen funds. "Those who enjoy his confidence," wrote an effervescent eulogist of Field, "predict that the bulk of his vast fortune will be devoted to purposes of public utility." But this prediction did not materialize. $140,000,000 TO TWO BOYS.