Philanthropic Foundations And Why They Are A Problem

“One is impressed immediately by the sense of national harmony… There is a very real and pervasive dedication to Chairman Mao and Maoist principles. Whatever the price of the Chinese Revolution, it has obviously succeeded not only in producing more efficient and dedicated administration, but also in fostering high morale and community purpose. General social and economical progress is no less impressive…The enormous social advances of China have benefited greatly from the singleness of ideology and purpose… The social experiment in China under Chairman Mao’s leadership is one of the most important and successful in history.”

David Rockefeller.

In 1902 David's grandfather, John D. Rockefeller Sr., created the General Education Board as a philanthropic tax-exempt foundation with the expressed intent of shaping American education. Later known as the Rockefeller Foundation(1), the GEB, certainly should not have had the power to influence the entire reformation of a national education system or manipulate the government of the United States to that end. Yet as incredible as it may seem, when one researches the minutes of the Rockefeller, Carnegie and Ford foundations meetings and peruses the pages of their own literature, that is exactly what we find.

Officially, John D. Rockefeller Sr. had the Board chartered by the United States Congress in early 1902 - recognizing it as a legitimate corporation. Shortly thereafter Rockefeller sent a letter dated March 1, 1902 to the Board's chairman, William H. Baldwin Jr. indicating the intentions of his seemingly benevolent mandate:"to promote education in the United States of America without distinction of sex, race, or creed;"(2)

The following is the General Education Board's first mission statement, written by Frederick Taylor Gates, in 1906, called Occasional Letter Number One:

"In our dreams, people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions of intellectual and character education fade from their minds and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into men of learning or philosophers, or men of science. We have not to raise up from them authors, educators, poets or men of letters...great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, statesmen, politicians, creatures of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple as well as a beautiful one...So we will organize our children and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shops and on the farm"

Who was Frederick T. Gates? He was the longtime business adviser to John D. Rockefeller Sr. and would serve as the first president of the GEB. He presided over a ten member board of trustees including Wallace Buttrick - as its first Secretary and Executive Officer, George Foster Peabody, William H. Baldwin Jr., Jabez L. M. Curry, Morris K. Jessup, Daniel Coit Gilman, Robert C. Ogden, Walter H. Page, Albert Shaw and John D. Rockefeller Jr.

On June 30, 1905, a gift was sent to the Board, "DEAR SIRS: I am authorized by Mr. John D. Rockefeller to say that he will contribute to the General Education Board the sum of ten million dollars ($10,000,000), to be paid October first next, in cash or, at his option, in income producing securities, at their market value, the principal to be held in perpetuity as a foundation for education...or employed in such other ways, as the Board may deem best adapted to promote a comprehensive system of higher education in the United States." One week later, the Board replied by thanking Rockefeller for his 'munifect gift', and in return for such a generous offer, they stated the following; "we pledge our devoted support to the principles which have been laid down in our Statement of Policy, and it will be our chief aim to prove ourselves worthy of the great responsibility which you have placed upon us."(3)

And once again on February 7, 1907, another letter, and another gift sent this time from John D. Rockefeller Jr. that stated "GENTLEMEN: My father authorizes me to say that on or before April 1, 1907, he will give the General Education Board income bearing securities, the present market value of which is about thirty-two million dollars ($32,000,000).

The original mandate of the General Education Board can be taken directly from their own documents and went on to further detail their plans to "endow elementary schools or primary schools, industrial schools, technical schools, normal schools, training schools for teachers, or schools of any grade, or higher institutions of learning; to cooperate with associations engaged in educational work; to donate property, to collect educational statistics and information, to publish and distribute documents and reports, and in general to do and perform all things necessary or convenient for the promotion of the object of the corporation. Under the order thus conferred, the entire field of education in the United States - taking the word education in its broadest significance - is open to the General Education Board...it can undertake educational experimentation along new and hitherto untried lines, whether at the primary, academic, technical, industrial, or professional level; it can conduct educational research and disseminate educational data".(4)(5)

It is extraordinary how one organization could, through the whims of one man, be afforded such an immense responsibility. For the government to allow the General Education Board to freely 'experiment', in its 'broadest significance', with the education of millions of young Americans is simply breathtaking. The Boards range of activities was three fold, and all comprehensive: 1.) the promotion of practical farming in the Southern States. 2.) the development of a system of public high schools in the Southern States; and 3.) the promotion of higher education throughout the United States. It was the objective of the Board's trustees, Peabody, Ogden, Curry and Buttrick, along with the trustees of the Slater Fund and several other prominent private individuals to ensure the reconstruction and organization of education in the South with the construction of negro schools.(6)(7)(8)

To be certain, philanthropy didn't start with Rockefeller. As early as 1866, George Peabody(the father of philanthropy) had donated $2,100,000 to education, eventually increasing that total to $3,500,000 in 1869 with the intention of promoting 'popular' education in the South - Rockefeller merely perfected it. This work was realized mainly through three men who would act as agents for the Board and travel in advance of the construction of schools in areas that they had previously deemed demographically important. Representing the Peabody Fund and sometimes president of Brown University, was Reverend Dr. Barnas Sears, who after his passing was succeeded by GEB board member, Dr. James Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry and Wickliffe Rose, a member of the Southern Education Board's Bureau of Investigation and Information at the University of Tennessee and future president of the GEB.(9)(10)

These three men acting as agents on behalf of the Peabody Board "assisted the educational leaders of several states in creating sentiment and procuring legislation favorable to popular education" and their efforts proved to be impactful, establishing public schools in cities and towns while also fulfilling the third part of the GEB's mandate of promoting institutions of higher learning with the founding of the Hampton Institute, Tuskegee Institute and the George Peabody College for Teachers, at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.(11)(12)

"When we make it possible for financial power to exercise substantial control over education, we endanger our welfare." Dr. Ernest Victor Hollis, former Chief of College Administration in the United States office of Education during testimony in the Reece Committee investigation into tax-exempt foundations. pg 140

In this way, the Peabody Fund was setting an important precedent. This was the first time we see the combining of unofficial private organizations with public institutions for the purpose of education reform. These reconnaissance agents were essential in assisting the passing of educational legislation on the county, state and federal levels. This strategic, predetermined reformation of education was repeated throughout the South using the Slater Fund and the Southern Education Board as 'clearing houses'. In exchange for a grant, Rockefeller was given primary influence of all curriculum and policy decisions. In doing so, Rockefeller leveraged local and state officials into accepting compulsory education on his terms, This quid pro quo ultimately culminated in the implementation of a nation-wide Fichtean pedagogy that spread throughout the entire United States and Canada 'without distinction of sex, color or creed', and has remained largely unchanged for over a century. When put into its proper perspective, and with over one hundred years of hindsight with which to examine the results, the General Education Board's well-meaning intentions begin to take on a far more nefarious appearance.

"Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure- One World, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it." (Memoirs, David Rockefeller, pg 404,405)

Along with John D. Rockefeller's massive influence, steel magnate, Andrew Carnegie also had a significant impact on American education. After amassing a great fortune of his own, Carnegie was nearing retirement. Following the sale of the Carnegie Steel Company to J.P. Morgan, Carnegie began funding the development of public libraries throughout the Western world. In total, Carnegie funded the development of over 3,000 libraries across the US, Canada, Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the West Indies, and Fiji. Carnegie founded the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1901, the Carnegie Institution at Washington D.C. in 1902 and the Tuskegee Institute. He also funded the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Encyclopedia Americana while even finding time to serve on several boards including at Cornell University and Stevens Institute of Technology

By creating this network of libraries across the English speaking world, Carnegie had established an integral authoritative framework that - when put in conjunction with Rockefeller's restructuring of the entire American school system - created an impressive monopoly over information. In fact, both Rockefeller and Carnegie were key players in a coordinated scheme to shape Western society that extended not only into the compulsory education system but the higher learning institutions of academia, law schools, the State Department and even foreign policy.

Whether foundation managers like to admit their influence or not, foundation giving most obviously has an enormous impact on education, on social thinking, and ultimately on political action. This influence reaches the public through the schools and academies,through publicity, and through educational and other associations dedicated to public and international affairs.

W. H. Whyte, Foundations: Their Power and Influence. pg 28

On the surface, an education "without distinction to sex, color or creed" certainly seems benevolent enough; to the normal every day American this certainly sounds like a mandate worth supporting, but as they say, the devil is in the details. Because these sweeping historical changes to our education system came from not only private citizens but two of the most wealthy industrial oligarchs ever to exist, the system was guaranteed to be skewed through their own personal beliefs, stereotypes, ideologies and prejudices. Not only did John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie monopolize the oil and steel industries but they then parlayed that massive wealth into an insidious plan to corner the market on free thought; to suppress individual expression exactly as the pathological ideologies of Johann Gottlieb Fichte had done one hundred years earlier in Prussia.

"These original studies of the "public interest" disclosed that during the four years 1933-1936, a change took place that was so drastic as to constitute a revolution. They also indicated conclusively that the responsibility for the economic welfare of the American people had been transferred heavily to the Executive Branch of the Federal Government; that a corresponding change in education had taken place from an impetus outside of the local community, and this revolution had occurred without violence and with the full consent of an overwhelming majority of the electorate." The Dodd Report to the Reece Committee on Foundations

These industrial cartels had no loyalty to anything other than wealth and power. Their actions have resulted in a nation of workers, not thinkers and now - a century later - we see the sad aftermath. We see the carnage of an ill advised compulsory education system created upon the selfish wishes of a very small number of privately owned, philanthropic tax-exempt foundations. Any public debate that had previously existed over the state of western education can now be settled as we bare witness to our true reality - the standardization of western society and more specifically the deliberate 'dumbing down' of the North American population. And it is not as if this should come as any surprise to anyone. It's not exactly breaking news that, when it comes to education, the United States has traditionally ranked terribly low in global rankings of all the industrialized nations. Today, there is a large section of the population who are deeply disappointed and disturbed by our continued ineptitude. In fact, there was back then too. Ever since tax exempt foundations were created there has been questions raised regarding the moral and ethical conundrum created when we allow the leaders of industry to impose their influence upon society, as evidenced by several examples offered below;

If this experiment bears the expected fruit we shall see imposed upon the country a system of education born of the theories of one or two men, and replacing a system which has been the natural outgrowth of the American character and the needs of the American people...The plans of the General Education Board call for careful examination. (13)

The Manufacturers Record:

Control, through possession of the millions massed in the Educational Trust, of two or three or four times as many millions of dollars in education makes possible control of the machinery and the methods of education. It makes it possible for the central controlling body to determine the whole character of American education, the textbooks to be used, the aims to be emphasized. Operating through State, denominational, and individual systems of schools and colleges, it gives the financial controller power to impose upon its beneficiaries its own views, good or bad, and thereby to donate public opinion in social, economic and political matters.(14)

The New Orleans Times Democrat:

The case here is plainly stated. The fund which the General Education Board administers is largely provided by men whose interest in shaping public opinion upon certain matters of vital concern to society and to the State is very great. Whether their philanthropy serves as a cloak to attain the ends desired, or whether the plan is unselfishly conceived and the sinister influence unconsciously exerted, the effect is likely to be the same in the end.

The gifts are hedged about by restrictions and conditions, with the education board to name them and to see that they are complied with. Every college which shares in the largess poses as a supplicant, in a sense. Not only is its policy partially directed by the Board, but it is additionally influenced, wittingly or unwittingly, by the desires of its benefactors.(15)

In 1954 Norman Dodd, the chief researcher for the United States House Select Committee to Investigate Tax Exempt Foundations (the Reece Committee) had found within the records of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace an astounding array of documentation that indicated a collaboration between the Carnegie endowment, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation to control society through their wealth. The following is an excerpt from a 1982 interview Dodd had conducted with G. Edward Griffin just prior to Dodd's death:

"Rowan Gaither was at that time president of the Ford Foundation and Mr. Gaither [suggested that] when I found it convenient to be in New York [for] me to call upon him at his office, which I did, and on arrival and after a few amenities, Mr. Gaither said, 'Mr. Dodd, we've asked you to come up here today because we thought possible off the record you would tell us why the congress is interested in the activities of a foundation such as ourselves'. And before I could think of how to reply to that, Mr. Gaither then went on voluntarily and stated 'Mr. Dodd, all of us that have a hand in making policies here have had experience with either the OSS during the war or European economic administration after the war we've had experience operating under directives. These directives emanate and did emanate from the White House. And we still operate under just such directives. Would you like to know what the substance of the directives is?' And I said 'Yes, Mr. Gaither I would like very much to know. Where upon he made this statement to me, namely, Mr. Dodd we here operating in response to similar directives the substance of which we shall use our grant making power so to alter life in the United States so that it can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union." (16)

Here we see, a deliberate and admitted communist conspiracy to merge the United States with the Soviet Union directed by the Ford Foundation. Dodd then went on to detail the conversation of a meeting that occurred under similar circumstances at the New York offices of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace;

"We are now at the year 1908, which was the year that the Carnegie began operations, and in that year, the trustees - meeting for the first time - raise a specific question, which they discuss throughout the balance of the year in a very learned fashion, and the question is: Is there any means known more effective than war, assuming you want to alter the life of an entire people? And they conclude that, no more effective means to that end is known to humanity. So in 1909, they raise the second question and discuss it, namely: How do we involve the United States in a war?" (17)

"The only way to maintain control of the population was to obtain control of the education in the U.S. They realized this was a prodigious task so they approached the Rockefeller Foundation with the suggestion that they go in tandem so the portion of education which could be considered domestically oriented would be taken over by the Rockefeller Foundation, and the portion which was oriented to international matters be taken over by the Carnegie Endowment."(18)

"I directed the staff to explore Foundation practices, educational procedures, and the operations of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government since 1903 for reasonable evidence of a purposeful relationship between them. Its ensuing studies disclosed such a relationship and that it had existed continuously since the beginning of the 50 year period. In addition, these studies seem to give evidence of a response to our involvement in international affairs. Likewise, they seemed to reveal that grants had been made by Foundations (chiefly by Carnegie and Rockefeller) which were used to further this purpose by:

• Directing Education in the United States toward an international viewpoint and discrediting the traditions to which it (formerly) had been dedicated.

• Training individuals and service agencies to render advice to the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.

• Decreasing the dependency of education upon the resources of the local community and freeing it from many of the natural safeguards inherent in this American tradition.

• Changing both school and college curricula to the point where they sometimes denied the principles underlying the American way of life.

• Financing experiments designed to determine the most effective means by which education could be pressed into service of a political nature."(19)

The national pedagogy put forth by Rockefeller, Carnegie, Peabody et al still exists largely in its original form today. These Foundations, by their very definition are not to have any political affiliation for risk of losing their tax-exempt status - not to mention the trust of the public - yet Dodd and his staff found substantial evidence that these Foundations were not only affiliated, but were even giving advice to, and assisting the government in the passing of legislation. And, not only that, they were undermining the very American way of life on behalf of Soviet Marxist interests(!) Today, the many examples of their interference is only surpassed by the evidence of their failures.

"I believe the power to make money is a gift from God - just as are the instincts for art, music, literature, the doctor's talent, yours - to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of humankind. Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow-man according to the dictates of my conscience." (20)

But their influence over society doesn't end at the shores of North America, their confidence game has spread internationally. The UN, UNESCO and other global entities have fallen prey to the same quid pro quo. The same large incentives that coerced representatives on a county, state and federal level now conspire on a global level. The same standardization scheme that was applied to the American education system has now been applied internationally as evidenced with the advent of the European Union and NATO. In many ways, national borders no longer exist and these foundations enjoy more power and influence than entire countries. Today, the Rockefeller, Carnegie and Ford Foundations continue to wield a disproportionate amount of power and influence just as before, but now there are new players on the scene. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Open Society Foundation, and the Clinton Foundation have also entered the fray. They all play a significant role in the continuation of a synchronized effort to eliminate individuality, sovereignty and human consciousness first started by the GEB. And after all these years, the goal remains the same; the adoption of Marxist communist planks while pushing towards an admitted one world government - and it is nearing completion. After considerable research I have arrived at the same conclusions that every committee that has investigated these tax exempt organizations has arrived at. There is a subversive Marxist effort to undermine Western values and not only isn't there a sign of the situation changing, a majority of the western population - especially those on the Left - remain completely unaware.

The Reece Committee has been castigated for asserting that subversive influences have played a part in the history of foundations in the United States. Yet it was its predecessor, the Cox Committee, which made this utterly plain, in so far as actual Communist penetration of foundations was concerned, That Committee produced evidence which supported its conclusion that there had been a Moscow-directed, specific plot to Penetrate the American foundations and to use their funds for Communist propaganda and Communist influence upon our society. There was also evidence that this plot had succeeded in some measure. Foundations: Their Power and Influence, pg 174

ln writing the platform for the Communist League, Marx and Engels predicted that the proletariat would "use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hand of the state,i.e., of the proletariat organized as a ruling class." A considerable number of the planks of the Communist Manifesto have become part of the law of our land; but this has been accomplished not through a seizure of power by a "proletariat" but through the misguided

efforts of our intellectuals. Rene Wormser, Reece Committee member and author of Founations: Their Power and Influence. pg 197

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Footnotes:

1:Original Board of Trustees 1902, The General Education Board An Account of its Activities 1902-1914. Officer and Members of the General Education Board Xiii. While some may contend that the Rockefeller Foundation did not evolve directly from out of the General Education Board I contend that they are one and the same. On the timeline on their own website the Rockefeller Foundation claim the same mandate towards education, verbatim, that was put forth in a letter by John D. Rockefeller himself that accompanied the very first grant of $1,000,000 to the General Education Board, "to promote education in the United States without distinction of sex, race, or creed." Implying that they are indeed the same entity. Additionally, on the same website, the Rockefeller Foundation takes responsibility for the elimination of the hook worm, a claim they could only take credit for if they themselves believed that the General Education Board and the Rockefeller Foundation were the same foundation. The elimination of the hook worm was a part of the same early grants that the General Education Board received and actually took credit for eliminating.

2. The General Education Board: An Account of its Activities Appendix II. Letters Announcing Gifts To The General Education Board and Replies Thereto (a) correspondence with Mr. Rockefeller.

3. Ibid

4. The General Education Board, History of the Board, pg 3,4.

5. Ibid

6. Memorandum of the General Education Board. The Rockefeller Letters. See also The General Education Board. The History of the Board. pg. 3,4.

7. General Education Board. The History of the Board

8. Ibid

9. J.L.M. Curry, A Biography, Chapter XV Peabody and His Trust. pg. 249.

10. Wickliffe Rose by Mary S. Hoffschwelle, Middle Tennessee State University

tennesseeencylopedia.net/entry.php?rec=1150)

11. The General Education Board, History of the Board, pg. 9.

12. Ibid

13. (the Leipzig Connection 73 taken fro the New York Times January 21, 1917, Section 7&8, pg 2.)

14. (Congressional records 1917,2834) Leipzig Connection pg 75

15. Ibid.

16.(Congressional Record February 8 1917, 2834) The Leipzig Connection pg 75,76.

17. Norman Dodd, The G. Edward Griffin interview. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUYCBfmIcHM&t=1608s

18. Ibid.

19. The Dodd Report to the Reece Committee, 1954. United States House Select Committee To Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations.

20.The Rockefeller Billions: The Story of the Worlds Most Stupendous Fortune (New York MacMilllan, 1965), pg 280.