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Do all that you can to seem good, for that can be infinitely useful. But since false opinions do not last, it will be difficult to seem good for very long, if you are really not.

Francesco Guicciardini
Maxims and Reflections

The best philanthropy, the help that does the most good and the least harm, the help that nourishes civilization at its very root, that most widely disseminates health, righteousness, and happiness, is not what is usually called charity. It is, in my judgment, the investment of effort or time or money, carefully considered with relation to the power of employing people at a remunerative wage, to expand and develop the resources at hand, and to give opportunity for progress and healthful labor where it did not exist before. No mere money-giving is comparable to this in its lasting and beneficial results.

If, as I am accustomed to think, that statement is a correct one, how vast indeed is the philanthropic field! It may be urged that the daily vocation of life is one thing, and the work of philanthropy quite another. I have no sympathy with this notion. The man who plans to do all his giving on Sunday is a poor prop for the institutions of the country.

The excuse for referring so often to the busy man of affairs is that his help is most needed. I know of men who have followed out this large plan of developing work, not as a temporary matter, but as a matter of permanent principle. These men have taken up doubtful enterprises and carried them through to success often at great risk, and in the face of great skepticism, not as a matter only of personal profit, but in the larger spirit of general uplift. (John D. Rockefeller, Random Reminiscences of Men and Events, p. 93. Emphasis added.)

Rockefeller's little book is filled with such advice, expressed with simple clarity. If, as Maimonides said and as most people seem to believe, the highest and finest form of charity is to take another man into your business, to give him honest work so that he can sustain himself, one might agree that "The man will be most successful who confers the greatest service on the world."

I stood (until February 1987) in some broken line relationship to John D. Rockefeller. The Standard Oil Company he created was divided into 34 parts in 1911, one of which was Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, the company that became known as Exxon Corporation in 1972 and that provides the funds for the work of the Exxon Education Foundation.

"If the people of the world can be educated to help themselves," he wrote, "we strike at the root of many of the evils of the world" (p. 98). By 1908, when Rockefeller wrote those words, he had contributed most of the $35 million that helped to establish the University of Chicago.

It is my belief that the principal cause for the economic differences between people is their difference in personality, and that it is only as we can assist in the wider distribution of those qualities which go to make up a strong personality that we can assist in the wider distribution of wealth. Under normal conditions the man who is strong in body, in mind, in character, and in will need never suffer want. But these qualities can never be developed in a man unless by his own efforts, and the most that any other can do f-or him is, as I have said, to help him to help himself. (P. 100. Emphasis added.)

Many have believed that education is the means by which such qualities of "personality" are developed. Others have argued for the tenets of religion, for the nurturing support of the family, for the character-building qualities of competitive sports. Others speak of "cultural values"; the British economist P. T. Bauer argues that the uneven development of Third World countries is more than anything else the result of the different weight and importance put on economic achievement and efficiency. No amount of central planning, says Bauer, will overcome those profound cultural differences.

I think Bauer and Rockefeller would agree: What is most needed in poor countries is a change in their character, in their "personality" as Rockefeller put it, in the value they put on economic performance.

Neither of the major political parties in the United States would disagree with the premise that the most important thing any society can do is to have a strong private-sector economy that will provide work for substantially everyone. The emphasis is different, and exaggerated in the rhetoric of a presidential campaign year, but the basic premises are accepted by both parties.

It is not simply a matter of the distribution of goods: It does matter how they are produced as well as distributed. As Rockefeller said, "The only thing which is of lasting benefit to a man is that which he does for himself. Money which comes to him without effort on his part is seldom a benefit and often a curse" (P. 98. Emphasis added.). If self-worth is a value of fundamental importance, self-help is essential. "If we can help people to help themselves, then there is a permanent blessing conferred."

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