For Nobler Men

U. S. educators perpetually talk poor mouth. Nevertheless, one-seventh of all public moneys goes to public education, and for educational purposes the Carnegie Corporation alone disgorges $6,000,000 a year, the Rockefeller General Education Board another $9,400,000. In addition, educative projects are far more often benefited in the wills of rich men than any other type of philanthropy. Biggest educational windfall since 1924 when Tobaccoman James Buchanan ("Buck") Duke established his Duke Endowment (present value approximately $53,000,000), dropped last week in Manhattan when the will of Banker Charles Hayden (TIME, Jan. 18) set aside the bulk of his $50,000,000 for tune for "the moral, mental and physical wellbeing, uplifting and development of boys and young men."

Son of a wealthy Boston shoe manufacturer, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Charles Hayden specialized in economics and mining engineering. Fore seeing the expansion of electrical power, he made up his mind to get rich in copper. Charles Hayden proposed to do so not by mining copper but by speculating in copper. Year after graduation he took a $3-a-week job as a "ticker boy" to learn the inside of a broker's office. At 21 he was ready to borrow $20,000 from his father, launch his own brokerage business with his officemate Galen L. Stone, whose Milk Street friends put up another $20,000. Hayden, Stone & Co.'s shrewd "market letter" and energetic ways soon brought it a large and profitable clientele.

Ambitious Charles Hayden made it his habit to get to work at 8:30 a.m., systematically budgeted every day's time. Master of every brokerage trick, he drove himself unsparingly through the corporate intricacies of rubber, nickel, public utilities, sugar and oil. He amazed associates by his instantaneous decisions, nettled callers by clipping their conversation short when he foresaw their missions. Partner Stone was silent from the start. Banker Hayden never cultivated an assistant. Until he was stricken last month, he ran his own labyrinthine business by himself, piled up 89 directorships, 58 of which he still held at the time of his death, ranked as a prime Wall Street Power.

Charles Hayden lived quietly at Manhattan's Savoy-Plaza hotel, never married. His comparatively modest interest in charity began when he became interested in the Boy Scout Foundation of Greater New York. He learned enough of recreational work to want to contribute to a few social service agencies, in 1926 gave $100,000 for the site of an uptown Manhattan boys' club. "The businessmen . . . will not have accomplished their full duty," once said reticent Bachelor Hayden, "until there is a Boys' Club in every town . . . in which [boys] may have their God-given right to play and work. . . ." Spiritually stirred by a planetarium performance in Chicago, he donated $150,000 toward the erection of a planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan (TIME, Jan. 15, 1934, et seq.). He gave his alma mater $100,000 in 1927 for its student housing program. His one great philanthropy, the Charles Hayden Foundation, had to wait for his death. Pronounced Charles Hayden in his will:

". . . The future of this nation, and of the world . . . depends in no small part upon the young men. If . . . they be fostered and encouraged in the manner of right and proper living . . . we shall rear a nobler race of men, who will make better and more enlightened citizens, to the ultimate benefit of mankind."

The 50 Hayden millions will be administered by his executors--President Arthur J. Ronaghan of Equitable Trust Co., Controller Edgar A. Doubleday of Hayden, Stone & Co., Vice President & Treasurer Erie V. Daveler of Utah Copper Co., his younger brother, Josiah Willard Hayden, a roly-poly Boston epicure to whom he left a life interest in a $2,000,000 trust fund. Except for the $1,000,000 trust fund bequeathed to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Foundation will eventually manage all the trust funds Banker Hayden allotted to relatives and friends, including a $30,000 annuity for Anita Stewart de Braganga, widow of the pretender to the Portuguese throne. To Hayden, Stone & Co. the executors were empowered to lend $5,000,000 so that the banking firm might avoid "any embarrassment" during its management transition. Not to be decided until the Foundation's four administrators meet is whether Banker Hayden's millions will be spent in grants to existing schools and colleges, as many a bursar and overseer hoped last week, or by devising the Foundation's own method of making a nobler race.

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