And so we find our ideal young Rockefeller, his ears shut against the importunities of paupers and panderers and parasites, plunging deep and resolutely into the details of business--of the several vast enterprises which he, by inheritance, owns or controls. And soon all his father’s old friends, with the approval of all the leading men in finance and industry, are discussing whether a commission ought not to be obtained, and cannot be obtained, to inquire into the sanity of the young man. Not dividends, but honesty and justice! Why, the young fellow’s brain is turned! Denouncing business methods approved by the best lawyers at the bar, sanctified by the use of the greatest captains of industry? Insisting that commodities should be sold at only a fair profit over and above the cost of production? Dismissing men skilled in legal and business chicane? Insisting that no man in his employ shall have less than a decent living wage? Calling for the reorganization of great properties, not to increase but to decrease the bonds and stocks on whose interest and dividends a hundred of our best people are able to lead lives of elegant leisure and look down with amused pity on those who have to toil? There is no escape from the conclusion that the young man is mad, mad as a hatter, mad as a March hare. If he had established soup kitchens to tempt the hard-working to knock off and join the army of lusty beggars, if he had given millions to enable missionaries to live at ease while they gratified their abnormal passion for meddling in other people’s business, if he had subsidized faculties to teach only “safe and sane” doctrines, if he had set aside vast corruption funds for debauching legislatures to suffer the people to be despoiled, if he had poured rivers of water into the stocks and bonds of his enterprises, had cut down wages and raised prices, if he had built himself half a dozen palaces, and conducted himself like a monkey that has been given a red cap and a pink jacket--why, that would have been sane, eminently sane. But honesty and justice! And in his own affairs! A real, practical application! Hear the shouts of derisive laughter. See the winks, the tongues in derisive cheeks. “The man’s mad! The man’s mad!” cries a generation tainted with the coarse ideals of riches, show and condescension. But let us suppose that he is not strait-jacketed by his friends nor daunted by the hoots of the crowd. Let us suppose that he remains at large and has his way. And then, let us look at his first great “philanthropy.”