What would you find in a millionaire’s waste basket in 1910? (Today maybe make that billionaire.) The usual stuff, of course: Eggshells, coffee grounds, dog hair, squeezed-out toothpaste tubes, single errant socks…But also something else quite particular, according to Mrs. E.H. Harriman, widow of the railroad mogul and philanthropist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Williamson_Averell

Lots and lots of letters from people wanting — what else? — money. Begging letters, to be precise. And almost all would be destined for her garbage.

The Harrimans, along with Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller Jr., had been among the earliest benefactors of the government reform movement represented by the New York Bureau of  Municipal Research, where Robert Moses, Luther Gulick and other eminences of public administration made their names.

After E.H. died at 61 in 1909, leaving his missus up to $100 million (around $2.5 billion in today’s money), Mrs. Harriman continued their largesse, notably funding the Bureau and its momentous Training School for public servants headed by the redoubtable historian Charles Beard.

But there was a downside, as she lamented in an unpublished 1912 manuscript found in the archives. The incessant appeals for money.

Entitled simply “Manuscript of Book on Efficient Giving”, the work, by the Bureau, with a foreword by Mrs. Harriman, detailed the barrage of mail she received by supplicants seeking pieces of her fortune, and what the public  needed to know about her system of  philanthropy.

(So the title could have been worse. Note the alternates including: Six Thousand Begging Letters: Philanthropy’s Waste Basket; Millionaire’s Waste Basket; and American Benefactions and Maleficiaries.)

If there was a common theme to the appeals, it was this: You can send me $20,000 and never miss it.

Mrs. H’s answer: there are better ways of giving.

For its study, the Bureau analyzed 6,000 letters of appeal sent to her in 1910 and 1911 from individuals, churches, hospitals, charities, universities and other hopefuls all over the world.

“Three thousand men, women and children in the United States asked $22,000,000 for themselves; 1,100 benevolent agencies in the United States asked for $153,000,000. 1,400 personal letters from Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia asked for $32,000,000; while 150 institutions of various kinds from foreign countries asked for $6,000,000. ”

A man wanted $20 to attend a reunion of Confederate soldiers; a New Jersey mother asked $2,000 for a chicken farm ;a church needed $50,000 for a mission among mountain whites in the south; a wife needed $15,000 to make up money she lost in speculation without telling her husband; European girls wanted dowries; inventors sought backing; self-described beautiful Kentucky girls needed money for musical training…

(The highfalutin language of some appeals might seem to have inspired the internet scam artists of a century hence: “We covet your most careful scrutiny and investigation of the details of this undertaking…” )

Others wrote offering to sell Mrs. H: a robe made of Arctic eagles’ breasts; a picture of “Betsey Ross”; a 1799 collection of hymns by John Wesley; the horn of a steer eaten for breakfast by a company of Virginia soldiers…

There were crank letters. A man mailed her a scented soap every two weeks, along with progressive chapters of his life history. A supposedly cured patient from a hospital for the criminally insane asked for a gift in exchange for a promise to grant Mrs. H and her family eternal life.

And that, the Bureau wrote, didn’t count the appeals that came to her verbally, face-to-face.

Mrs. H, being a wise and compassionate soul, pondered the meaning of it all, wondering, as she told the Bureau: “Is this touch with human need in all corners of the globe given me for no use? Can I do nothing but throw these letters in the waste basket merely because I have neither facts, nor hours in the day nor money to determine where I can help without hurting? Is there any lesson in these hundreds of appeals for me?…”

There was, she concluded. Through the Bureau’s study, she could lay out a strategy of scientific giving — much as the Bureau she was nurturing was devising a new science of scientific government and efficient public administration.

Clearly, Mrs. H concluded, it was more more sensible to give to charitable institutions that would determine individual needs. She also advocated “A National Clearing House for Givers.” (In a similar vein, the Bureau also studied the welter of duplicative  Jewish care organizations in turn-of-the-century New York and recommended a federation of Jewish philanthopies.)

In the end, Mrs. H issued what she called “A Magna Charta for Givers”: