The Rockefellers and money.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)

SIR: Generally I enjoy articles by Frank Devine, but in the September issue he has relied too much on his memory rather than on the printed page when referring to Laurance Rockefeller's involvement with the Reader's Digest:

 
   Rockefeller, a man aptly 
   described by a former Digest 
   editor, Peter Canning, in his 
   book American Dreamers, as 
   being easily shocked by "cruelty 
   to money", and ably assisted by 
   the former sole trustee, persuaded 
   a near-senile Wallace to bequeath 
   his vast empire to a number of 
   charitable trusts that reflected 
   Rockefeller's interests more than 
   Wallace's. 

Actually, Canning was writing about John D. Rockefeller, Sr:

 
   In his grandfather's day, at the 
   height of the vilification, the 
   humorist Mr Dooley had said of 
   the old pirate: "He is a kind 'iv 
   society for the prevention of 
   croolty to money. If he finds a 
   man misusing his money, why, 
   he takes it from him an' adopts 
   it." 

Then Canning wrote that Laurance apparently began to chafe at the thought of Wallace's money being "misused". The word shocked does not appear, but Canning was transferring the innuendo from the grandfather to the grandson. Canning goes to great lengths to impute improper and unworthy motives to Laurance's charitable and conservation activities. The tradition of muckraking in American journalism lives on. Yet shortly afterwards Canning concedes that it might as well have been Laurance who took charge of Wallace's financial empire than somebody worse, or words to that effect.