dreds of millions of
people,[186] and centering attention upon this one concrete instance of
frauds in taxes, the situation presented is an incongruous one. Money
belonging to the public treasury they retain by fraud; this money,
apparently a part of their "honestly acquired" fortune, is given in
some form of philanthropy; and then by some curious oversetting of even
conventional standards, they reap blessings and glory for giving what
are really stolen funds.

"Those who enjoy his confidence," wrote an effervescent eulogist of
Field, "predict that the bulk of his vast fortune will be devoted to
purposes of public utility." But this prediction did not materialize.

$140,000,000 TO TWO BOYS.

Field's fortune, conservatively estimated at $100,000,000, yet, in fact,
reaching about $140,000,000, was largely bequeathed to his two
grandsons, Marshall Field III., and Henry Field. Marshall Field, as did
many other multimillionaires of his period, welded his fortune into a
compact and vested institution. It ceased to be a personal attribute,
and became a thing, an inert mass of money, a corporate entity. This he
did by creating, by the terms of his will, a trust of his fortune for
the two boys. The provisions of the will set forth that $72,000,000 was
to set aside in trust for Marshall III., until the year 1954. At the
expiration of that period it, together with its accumulation, was to be
turned over to him. To the other grandson, Henry, $48,000,000 was
bequeathed under the same conditions.

These sums are not in money, although at all times Field had a snug sum
of cash stowed away; when he died he had about $4,500,000 in banks. The
fortune that he left was principally in the form of real estate and
bonds and stocks. These constituted a far more effective cumulative
agency than money. They were, and are, inexorable mortgages on the labor
of millions of workers, men, women and children, of all occupations. By
this simple screed, called a will, embodying one man's capricious
indulgence, these boys, utterly incompetent even to grasp the magnitude
of the fortune owned by them, and incapable of exercising the
glimmerings of management, were given legal, binding power over a mass
of people for generations. Patterson says that in the Field stores and
Pullman factories fifty thousand people work for these boys.[187] But
these are the direct employees; as we have seen, Field owned bonds and
stock in more than one hundred and fifty