Mr. E. S. Harkness

MR. EDWARD STEPHEN HARKNESS, the American philanthropist, who died on January 30 just a week after his sixty-sixth birthday, devoted his last score of years to administering and sustaining the benefactions instituted by his mother, who founded the Commonwealth Fund in America in 1918. The Harkness fortune was made in Standard oil. It dates from about seventy years ago, at which time Stephen V. Harkness, the father, who was in a small way of business in Cleveland, Ohio, is said to have lent the daring young Rockefeller £1,200. In the present century the example set by Rockefeller in efficient philanthropy inspired the Harkness family. After the death of the father, mother and son made philanthropy their first interest. The elder Mrs. Harkness died in 1926, leaving for the Fund an endowment of about £7,500,000, which sum Edward Harkness later increased to more than £10,000,000. But he also bestowed large personal gifts.