Mr. Garland's Million

Nineteen years ago young Charles Garland, who had just inherited a fortune from his Boston millionaire father, decided to give away a million dollars.

Somewhere in his education (at St. Paul's School and Harvard) young Garland had also acquired more ideas than he knew what to do with. But people were not so interested in them. One of Garland's ideas was that people ought to live together in simple peasant communes, sharing love and money. To carry out that idea he organized two April Farms, first in Massachusetts, then in Pennsylvania. In both there were girls in gay embroidered dress, young intellectuals in sturdy work clothes, living as free spirits, the most exotic peasantry that ever came out of the better Eastern colleges.

To give away the million, Garland set up the American Fund for Public Service, with a capital of approximately $900,000, voluntarily removed himself from all control of it. His idea was that the money should be spent as quickly as possible, consistent with wise giving to progressive causes that other agencies wouldn't touch. In those days, when the Bolsheviks were just getting established, money from Russia came as a bare trickle to U.S. radicals. The Daily Worker then got only $35,000 a year from the Communist International; the Garland Fund gave it some $50,000 more between 1924 and 1928. The Fund put up $17,000 to launch the weekly New Masses, put up another $16,400 to keep it going. It sank $82,000 into Federated Press, which began as a labor news service, soon turned into an effective Communist ally. The Fund helped such Communist fronts as International Labor Defense, the Trade Union Educational League, the League for Peace and Democracy, and the Manhattan Soviet daily Novy Mir. It established Vanguard Press (almost $145,000), which brought out revolutionary classics and books in praise of Russia (Vanguard was later sold, became a reputable commercial firm). The Fund put money into non-Communist radical experiments as well: a labor college, a labor daily that lasted six weeks ($40,000) under the editorship of Norman Thomas.

Among the Fund's directors were William Z. Foster (then secretly a Communist), Benjamin Gitlow (then a Communist tycoon ), Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (I.W.W.), the Reverend Harry Ward (Union Theological Seminary), Robert Morss Lovett (now Government secretary of the Virgin Islands). Though the Garland Fund threw money right & left (mostly left), instead of being depleted, it grew. (It held First National Bank of the City of New York stock during the '20s.) Sixteen years after Charles Garland decided to give away his million, the Fund was close to $2,500,000. Some of this paper profit was wiped out in the crash, but all told the Fund gave away more than twice the original $900,000 principal.

Meanwhile Charles Garland had run into trouble with April Farm. There were six men, six women and three children in the colony near Allentown, Pa., including Garland's son Mowgli. When reporters asked which belonged to which, Garland said: "As to unmarried people living together, this is a matter of individual inclination, and not understood by the common run of social fabric." A daughter was born to one of the women, without medical care, died three months later, without medical care. The undertaker refused to sell a coffin, because there was no death certificate.

Life on April Farm became nightmarish: When Garland tried to organize the colonists into an association, the charter was refused on the grounds that the colonists' views on marriage were "detrimental to the public welfare." All sorts of stories about the dead baby began to circulate; the women fled, taking the children with them. Garland was arrested on a charge of adultery. The dead baby's mother helped with the prosecution. He went to jail, served his sentence, dropped out of sight.

Last week the directors of the Garland Fund held a last meeting in a Manhattan cafeteria, decided to dissolve the fund. All the money was spent, except $2,000, which was returned to Charles Garland. Reporters found him living quietly in a New York City suburb. Said he: "I don't give money away any more."

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