On the 7th of March, 1889, Isaiah V. Williamson journeyed on, and after many days, the city in which he lived woke to some realization of its loss. For eighty-six years he had lived most of his days in Philadelphia, and yet few knew or cared to know him until the last five years of his life. Big men were too busy with their own affairs and little men too narrow to do more than point to him as a shabby, stingy, old man, as if the bent figure and clothes were all of the man or as though the quoting of some one word or act of his indicated the whole of the man. The visible is not always final. Color blindness to character and worth is much more common than the ordinary defective vision. There is nothing simpler than to judge by appearances and burn a human being at the stake of mistaken judgment.
From Fallsington Four Corners' Village Store to Philadelphia's foremost place as merchant and philanthropist had been a walk of upwards of fourscore years.
From the day he came down the Doylestown and Old York Road turnpike with his little bundle of two thousand dollars of savings, to begin business in Philadelphia, to the day sixty years later, when he went into the Fidelity Insurance Trust & Safe Deposit Company and voluntarily took out of his iron box two million one hundred thousand dollars in good securities and handed them over to the Trust he had created to establish the new apprenticeship School for young men, that they might ride in his golden chariot of good-will and fatherliness to success, was a long journey of self-denial, frugality, patience, and tireless energy.
It would seem as if every man might, in his own way, be permitted to study himself deeply in peace, especially if the key he seeks and finds is to unlock a gate to the betterment of the world, in his own day, and the time to come for those who follow him.
The country boy just entering into the city today might be another Isaiah V. Williamson, with a heart that could do even better work than he, if free to choose and use without criticism, the sling and stones he can handle best to fight his battle.
How much the little man from Bucks County, low in stature, high in thinking, deep in feeling, suffered in the forty years of dignity, patience and silence while he was in the wilderness of public opinion, nobody knows. It is only certain that the breath of his neighbors, by prejudice and carping, kept his thermometer close to zero. The obituaries, after the man travelled into the bourne beyond, might have added fuller, brighter, longer years to his life and enabled him to do what he had left undone, if anything like their contents could have been published for him to see while he was walking through the street, conscious of being misunderstood as an unfeeling speculator, if not forgotten altogether.
When the right word is spoken, it will help and not hurt. The poorest little man that lives and does something to help his neighbor is more than the finest bronze statue planted in the park or on the plaza. It is not the gun, but the man behind the gun, that counts. It is not the money left by Isaiah Williamson but the man back of the money that we want to remember.
All who enjoy such benefactions as this earnest Quaker, and men like him, have given, under conditions that can be accepted by self-respecting young men, should learn to know their benefactor well enough to accord him much more honor than the mere politeness of ordinary gratitude. The man himself can become a living friend to every young man who will stop to think that the past had in it a man who willed his life, his earnings, and his example to them in the hope that thereby he may make the way of life easier for them. Well brought up and cultivated enough to enjoy the luxuries of life, he called himself off from them to a life of great labor and frugality, that he might have the luxury of being their servant.
He set for all young men a splendid example in walking as a youth from his mother's door to the last day of his life on the straight road of unspotted honor, truthfulness and highest integrity. A good beginning makes a good ending.
The great musician, Ole Bull, the first violinist of his time, when playing at the Royal Court, was summoned after one of his matchless performances and asked to explain to the King where he obtained the harmonies he produced upon his instrument. Ole Bull replied: "Sire, I got them in the mountains of my country when I was a boy and I have never forgotten them." Isaiah Williamson never for a day of all his long life lost the sweetness, gentleness, and dignity of his little country Quaker mother, nor did he forget the stalwart, rugged manliness, strict honesty, and fairness of his father.
These stood him in good stead all his life. He was an upright apprentice and never filched his employer's time or goods. He committed thefts neither with his tongue nor with his hands. His fellow clerks were his neighbors' sons; he valued their good opinion and his influence over them.
He did not let the poison get into the spring at the beginning of his life. He started by killing bad habits in the germ, by choking them in his thoughts when the temptation was young. Sure enough, the man that picks a lock or breaks open a cash drawer does it first in his thoughts before he gets through the door where it is.
Young Williamson despised shams and make-believes. He never kept bad company. If he could not have friends of the best class, he preferred to be without any.
He planned his life and always worked towards the object he had before him.
There were no riddles in his life. The results were answers to tireless thinking and toiling.
At the end of his life, there were no old judgments of any kind recorded against him to be satisfied or documents to be destroyed.
The Honorable Wayne MacVeagh, in an eloquent address, on the occasion of the dedication of the Drexel Institute at Philadelphia, said in commendation of Anthony J. Drexel's gift, that not a penny of the money given by Drexel represented ill-gotten gains. These words, so true of Drexel, are absolutely true of Isaiah V. Williamson's wealth.
It is to be remembered, too, that all his money was of his own earning. He had not inherited any business established by his parents. He was the sole architect and maker of his own great fortune.
His methods of business were beyond criticism or reproach. While scrupulously exact, strictly claiming all that was fairly his right, he would take nothing more, always keeping clear of enterprises that bordered on 6harp practices or uncertain foundations, counting the loss of possible gains as nothing to the risk of staining his good name.
He had a curious habit of holding up in his office the propositions that were made to him. Instead of following an impulse or yielding to importunity for a quick decision, he deferred his conclusions by saying, "I must take time to think of this a little further." He would walk all round the proposition and look at it from all sides before he would act.
Stradivarius, the greatest of violin-makers of the olden time, it is said on good authority, used to go out into the forests and cut pieces of wood from half a hundred trees. These pieces he began testing and kept on trying until the last vestige of sap dried out and the elasticity of the wood became no longer a factor. Then he knew the wood. He knew that the violin he made would ring true, not in the present alone, but in the centuries to come. He built his violins to sing down through the ages, true and fine and sweet. He began right.
So did Isaiah Williamson begin right and, therefore, he was half done when he began. He never forgot to complete the details before he laid down any work he took up.
His life was not a drab monotony of money-grabbing, as some people supposed. Without going too much into detail, it will doubtless be of interest to quote a few paragraphs from the Philadelphia daily newspapers, called forth by Isaiah Williamson's brief sickness, sudden death, the failure to sign the codicil, and the publication of his will.
The Evening Telegraph said in its editorial columns: "When a Rothschild, a Girard, or a Williamson dies, it is a public rather than a private event. No one would here wish in the least to intrude upon privacy; but we all know the noble thoughts which have filled Mr. Williamson's heart, and what he fully meant to do;—that being the simple fact, the desire to know how completely his wishes are to be carried out is entirely natural. A short time probably will settle all uncertainty, but in the meanwhile Philadelphians can unite in a feeling commemoration of one of their most generous citizens. Nor will the reputation of his great undertaking be only local. As the name of Girard is national, so will the name of Isaiah V. Williamson be familiar all over the land as one who loved his fellowmen, and who held exceptional wealth only in trust for the general good."
"His plan, it will be observed," said the Evening Herald, "was not a scheme of alms-giving, as humiliating to honest poverty as it would be injurious to the indolent, but was intended to help men to use their own energies and to aid them in self-reliance and self-respect. This is the soul of benevolence, and one of the best means whereby men of wealth can assist in the onward march of humanity. The lesson of the life just ended is complete in itself; but should his design of establishing his great school be carried on in its fullness, thousands who owe him a happier, fuller life will yet call the name of Williamson blessed."
From several columns in the Philadelphia Press, this paragraph is fairly representative:
"The general idea of Mr. Williamson was plainly that he was a miser; that he lived for the sake of money-getting, denying himself all luxuries, and even many comforts; that until the great project of his industrial school was formed and the trust deeds given to the trustees his charities were few; and that he lived a lonely, crabbed life, loving no one and loved by only a few. His intimate friends deny all such assertions, and point to the fact that he had given nearly a million and a half to charities and institutions since 1876, as a complete refutation of such statements. It is known also that his heart was one of the tenderest, and his nature genial. He had a streak of humor in him, but his religious propensities were never prominent."
The newspapers printed a number of amusing stories, to illustrate his so-called "miserliness" in the last few years of his life, most of which were either untrue or grossly exaggerated, and insofar as true were merely eccentricities of what was really a lovable old age. He was pictured as a little, weasened old man, walking slowly through the streets around Bank and Elbow Lane, with bowed head and hands behind his back, carrying the same old umbrella with its years of associations, and plainly absorbed in deep thought. It was represented that except on rare occasions when he put on his old high hat and "best suit" to go to Clover Hill or elsewhere, he was usually seen in the same old suit, well worn, even shabby and ragged; and wearing a disreputable derby hat pulled well down to his ears, his thin white hair straggling out under its brim. And if Henry Lewis, or some other intimate friend, ventured a bantering remark: "I. V., you ought to get a new suit of clothes!" he would remark in the same facetious vein: "What's the matter with these? Don't they fit me all right?"
He was described in his little dingy back office, on Bank Street, where he spent thirty-five years or so, with its plain desk, three or four old trunks—relics of the European trip—stuffed with records and papers, its bare walls, and its general air of being a catch-all for rubbish—including the very shabby handbag in which the particular papers of the day were carried back and forth between the office and the trust company's vaults. He was pictured, also, as the strange being who would go into a restaurant and get a five-cent lunch, or haggle with the woman at the sandwich counter to let him have six ten-cent sandwiches, one a day for a week, for a lump sum of fifty cents; and then would hasten back to his office to sign a check for $5000 or $10,000 for some charity.
In a little cubby-hole of a barber shop on Elbow Lane, it was said, he used to indulge in a weekly shave; but when the barber suggested that he needed a haircut, he replied with infinite gentleness that his niece cut his hair twice a year. For other sample stories, it was related that when he was summering at a hotel in one of the beautiful and fashionable" suburbs of Philadelphia toward the end of his life, he used to bring back his soiled linen wrapped in a newspaper, as he could get his laundry done a few cents cheaper in town than at the hotel. Also, that when he found extortionate bus fare between the hotel and the station added to the first week's bill, which he had paid in advance, he refused to ride in the bus again, and walked back and forth every day thereafter, rain and mud to the contrary notwithstanding. And attention was called to the fact that, although he was immensely wealthy, he kept no carriage of his own until the very last year or two when he was unable to walk, and that he did not incur the expense of his own coupe and personal attendant until he was simply forced to it by his physical feebleness.
Now, in a way, these very eccentricities of old age make his character more interesting, and even more lovable. The simple fact is that he liked his old clothes; he liked his old office furnished with old desks, trunks and shelves, and having the associations of so many years. He liked the old umbrella and the shabby hand-bag. He felt "at home" with them all, just as he felt at home with his old friends. And really there is nothing strange about this. Old people generally feel that way, in their homes as in their offices, not as a matter of economy necessarily, but of personal comfort and ease of mind.
No doubt he disliked conventionalities; but it is not as if he were slovenly regarding personal care of himself. Those who were near to him are emphatic on this point. It is true that in later years Williamson, finding that two meals a day agreed better with his health, ate usually two or three graham wafers or a sandwich at noon. Thousands of middle-aged and elderly men today do the same thing regularly, not primarily for economy but for physical and mental vigor. That is what Williamson thought He had studied the laws of health in general and of his own health in particular; and he used to say what is now being so much emphasized by scientists, physicians and the people's newspapers: "People eat too much!"
As to the reply to the barber about having his hair cut, even if he ever said it, it is quite conceivable that he was having his little joke. All through life ran that vein of gentle, quiet humor, one of the sure signs of a nature full of feeling, and without which it is very doubtful if any man can be truly great, least of all a philanthropist. Humor lies next to pathos, and the one who can appreciate the humorous element in life is the one that most quickly responds to its pathetic side.
It was this sense of humor that made him instantly responsive to a good story, or led him often to express himself in a droll or unexpected way. When he was wheeled into the directors' meetings of the big corporations he would call out: "A clear track for the through express!" Mr. Helmbold says that in the frequent visits to the vaults of the safe department of a trust company, where he kept his securities, he would exclaim to the clerks in charge, as he was slowly wheeled in:
"Make way, make way! Here I come with my usual impetuosity!" And there was a pathetic touch in his humorous remarks to H. C. Townsend toward the end of his life, when they met one day in the office of the Cambria Iron Company. Isaiah Williamson had in his hand a check for $100,000, and when Mr. Townsend rallied him on its size, he asked:
"Do you want to earn that check?"
"I'm your man!"
"Make me a young man again!"
As to the eccentric way in which he protested at what he deemed extortion in the suburban hotel, there is another side to that story, which the papers did not get hold of. While he refused to use the hotel's conveyance again, he established a friendship with the driver and engaged him to take him on short drives in the evening on his own account. The fare would be twenty-five or fifty cents, according to the time out; but Isaiah Williamson invariably gave the driver a dollar, on the first occasion explaining his act in such words as these:
"You have earned what you charged me, and I have no right to dictate to you what you shall do with your earnings. But what I give you over your earnings I have earned, and have a right to speak about. I don't want you to waste it, but take it home to your wife and put it to good use."
The driver has said that this lesson in thrift and saving taught him by the eccentric hotel guest proved of great help to him in later years. And it is fair to presume that this was only one of many similar instances of personal influence which never came to light. How many lives he stimulated in his quiet way we have no means of knowing.
Speaking of his private carriage, it is true that in the latter part of his life, until he became too feeble, he was a confirmed pedestrian. He was fond of walking. Occasionally he took a cab or a carriage for some special reason, though generally he used the street cars if going some distance. But as his activities were chiefly confined within a few blocks of his office, such as daily visits to the Stock Exchange and the trust company, he preferred walking as a matter of convenience as well as of health. He was simply doing what he liked to do, entirely aside from any question of economy. That was his old-fashioned way, and it was one reason of his lengthened vigor and activity.
An editorial in the Public Ledger of April 12th, after the inventory of the Williamson estate had been filed, ridiculed the suggestion of miserliness: "The living man, if he is inclined to be 'miserly,' does not give away money in millions, in thousands, in hundreds, or even in tens. The 'miser' hoards money and keeps it; and he hoards it for the sole purpose of keeping it as long as he lives—just as long as he can. He never gives away any of it for charitable purposes or any other. What a monstrous misapplication of terms it therefore is to couple such words as ' closefisted,' 'mean,' or 'miserly' with the name of Isaiah Williamson, who distributed, while he was yet alive and might have had other uses for the money, four millions in charitable gifts for almost every form of benefaction that would relieve the suffering, that would help the needy, that would shelter the houseless and homeless, that would succor and support the helpless, that would stimulate talent by education, that would encourage the worthy, that would reward merit, that would build up industry, that would enlighten and uplift the rising generation of working!"
These incidents have been dwelt upon to bring Isaiah Williamson's personality more vividly to mind, and to show his large-heartedness. To the last there was a certain boyishness in the standing order to George, his attendant and coachman, to buy every Saturday a supply of candy and apples, the candy for his master's own use, and the apples for the horse. And the story goes that certain horses on the street learned to look for his coming, to pat their noses and feed them bits of broken apple.
He used to say that no man could be a good Christian who was not kind to animals, for "Christianity teaches love and kindness to man and beast."
His thoughtfulness also for the men about him was well known and characteristic, showing many kindnesses to such helpers as his coachman, and the janitor of the building in which he had his office so long. This office was in the store of Samuel W. Roop, commission merchant, afterward the firm of Roop & Washington, and later Billings, Roop & Washington. From 1850 to 1881 Mr. Williamson was a special partner, or had money invested in this firm, under its different names. One of the men who entered Roop's store in 1853, as a young clerk, and met Williamson intimately for about thirty years thereafter, says that in all those years "he never saw such an even and sweet-tempered gentleman"; and he gives a bit of personal experience that is illuminating. It seems that along about 1877, Williamson noticed that this man appeared very despondent, and upon inquiry learned that he was worried over certain losses in the business, in which he was at this time one of the partners. Williamson said to him:
"Brooding over losses is not the way to make money. It unfits you for future business. You must not look back over the gloomy past." Going to his safe, Williamson brought out a bundle of papers, saying: "That bundle represents hundreds of thousands of dollars which I have lost—much of it through misplaced confidence in friends. The worst of it was, I not only lost the money but in many cases the friendship, and yet I never in my life sued a man for a debt. And so, of late years, I have resolved never to loan a man money without taking security; then I am sure not to lose both my money and the man's friendship. But I am going to break this rule with you, my friend. Tell me how much money you need to tide you over, and you shall have it."
All this shows that the way in which the Philadelphia Record pictured Mr. Williamson the year before he died is the more accurate delineation. Its sketch closes in this way: "As a capitalist he has been identified with a large number of commercial, financial and railroad enterprises. In all he has been a director. That he has been earnestly solicited to accept the presidency of many, that his remarkable executive ability, his singular magnetic influence, and his unswerving integrity have been appreciated, everybody knows; but his refusal as a rule to take the first place is interesting because it is the key to the man's nature. That nature may be read in a face which retains in a surpassing degree its original sweetness and purity of expression. The marks with which the battle of business life scars most faces, can be traced in his only in the 'busy wrinkles,' not 'round' but at the corners of 'the eyes.' Intelligence of a high order, with blended firmness and gentleness, are to be read in Mr. Williamson's features, and in his expression the simplicity and modesty which have ever made distasteful to him all display, whether of the wealth he has amassed or the millions he has already bestowed in charity."
There are not many ten talent men to be found in one's lifetime, here and there one of two talents and the majority of men possess but one talent or even a half talent, much out of repair from non-use. The story of Isaiah Williamson's life is the word of an honest man, speaking modestly and kindly to us, saying, "Here is what I did with my one talent. I found myself with few tools but I made all the use of them possible for nearly a century. My first books were the fields and forests and my first and best teachers were the Quaker mother and father, whose lessons of principle and practice were the sheet anchors of my life. They knew what a shy boy needed and they gave it to me, not so much in words as in deeds; it was their gentleness, patience and religion, of which they never spoke, that I absorbed in our home more than anything in the Fallsington Meeting House or St. Peter's Church, at Third and Pine Streets. From them I learned not to be idle, not to hurry and how to work and to save. They taught me that the way to have anything to spend or give away was to first put it into storage and never to take out as much as I put in.
"From a godly father and mother, I learned that looking silently and inwardly at myself, I would find a light from heaven and that meditation led to prayer and guidance.
"I found that obedience to the truth given to me answered my desire to be shown the path for my life.
"So did my mother's and father's hands rest upon my head all my long life. My calling was only to do common things, which I tried to do humbly, but in an uncommon way. My work was to me as sacred as it would have been had I been called to teach or work upon canvas or stone.
"When I fully understood the talent I possessed, I regarded it as a crowning of power, not for self, and I consecrated it to Him who gave it to me to uplift the man and boy next to me as far as I could reach.
"In my business life, I never used my sickle to cut down a fellow man. I never lent a hand to help scuttle another's ship.
"I never made haste to be rich.
"I nursed the money-making instinct as God's gift and rooted myself where it grew as the one thing given to me to study and work with, but I lived in another room without idols of any kind.
"To me, great riches meant more hospitals, homes for aged and incurables, more schools and colleges, institutions for industrial education."
So speaks the little man of large soul out of the solitariness of his life; but for every man good and true, young or old, struggling to do his best work, there is an open door between earth and heaven.
A well-known Englishman, maker of tiles and pottery, who had risen from poverty to wealth, built for himself a magnificent palace in the midst of a great park of forest trees and botanical gardens. His fences were made with open gates that his many work-people might go in and out and enjoy the noble house and its grounds, fountains, pavilions and galleries, and find pleasure and education in its beauties.
Mr. Williamson has built nobly and none need go away without a piece of wholesome bread.
The End