In 1920, Charles Garland,
the wealthy heir to a banking fortune, made newspaper headlines for doing the unthinkable:
he declined to accept an inheritance of more than a million dollars from his late father’s estate.
Garland was disillusioned by the era’s gross
#inequality — the top 10 percent of American income earners took in half the country’s annual national income.
Garland saw his refusal to add to that problem as a way of standing up to systemic economic inequality.
But
#Upton #Sinclair,
author of “The Jungle,” the 1906 novel that exposed the brutal working conditions in the Chicago stock yards,
read about Garland’s decision and thought he had a better idea.
In a letter to Garland, Sinclair urged him not to refuse the money, but to instead give it away.
He put him in touch with
#Roger #Baldwin, a Harvard-educated labor advocate who had just founded the
American Civil Liberties Union.
Garland and Baldwin met and came up with a plan.
Garland would bequest nearly a million dollars
(the rough equivalent of $18 million today)
to endow a philanthropic foundation called the "American Fund for Public Service".
Baldwin would run the foundation with a board of directors comprised of people who were actively involved in efforts to create a more just society
https://news.yale.edu/2026/01/12/radical-fund-how-spurned-inheritance-fueled-progressive-change
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