Mr. Mills' Monument.
Darius Ogden Mills was one of the great business men of the age. He amassed an immense fortune by means of ceaseless industry coupled with unfailing sagacity. His career is a model for all that would succeed in the affairs of this world.
But when all that is forgotten, he will be remembered for his noble thought of his fellow creatures. This showed itself chiefly in the founding of the three Mills hotels in New York City-the best illustration, probably, of the highest type of philanthropy that our generation has afforded.
The, Mills hotels are enormous buildings. The first contains 1554 bedrooms, the second 600, and the third 1875. The last is a fifteen-story edifice the floors marble and granolithic, fitted with all appliances necessary for comfort, cleanliness, and safety. All of the hotels are places which any decent man might well be satisfied to occupy.
The chief point to be noted in regard to these hotels is that they are self-supporting. It is this that renders the philanthropy complete. Mr. Mills desired not to pauperize men, but to help them, and determined to place the enterprise upon a sound business footing. The only difference between the Mills hotels and the ordinary commercial hotels is that the former seek honestly to give their patrons the fullest possible return for their money. Large purchases, strict economies, and fine administration make the cost of living in a Mills hotel very small indeed, and yet the self-respecting man can go to one of them and be sure that he is paying for what he receives and for all of it.
There must be much giving in the world, for there are many that cannot help themselves—children, the sick, the crippled, the ignorant, the wayward. For these we must establish schools and hospitals and asylums and reformatories and missions. This, however, is in the main a temporary condition, save in the case of children, and as the world grows better and wiser and stronger its charity-giving will grow less, and the type of philanthropy represented by the Mills hotels will increase more and more to the blessing of mankind.