Garland Fund

The fund, administered by a group of trustees headed by Roger Baldwin of the American Civil Liberties Union, ultimately disbursed some $2 Million to a variety of radical and left wing institutions, including the Federated Press labor news service, the Vanguard Press publishing house, The New Masses magazine, The World Tomorrow magazine, and to the legal defense fund associated with the 1926 Passaic Textile Strike, as well as a host of similar projects.

Garland explained to a reporter at the time that he would not accept money from "a system which starves thousands while hundreds are stuffed" and which "leaves a sick woman helpless and offers its services to a healthy man.

"[1] Garland indicated to this reporter that he was not refusing to accept these funds because of socialist beliefs, but rather because as part of his study of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the works of Leo Tolstoy and H.G.

"[1] Hearing of the young man's decision to refuse his inheritance and his rationale, the socialist author Upton Sinclair urged Garland to accept the money not for his personal gain, but rather to put it to a higher use.

[3] Baldwin convinced Garland to accept his father's inheritance and to establish with it a "national trust fund" which would aid efforts to expand "individual liberty and the power of voluntary associations.

"[4] On July 5, 1921, the American Fund for Public Service was formally incorporated by Lewis Gannett of the New York World, Robert Morss Lovett of the University of Chicago, and Roger Baldwin.

[5] In preparation for the task of distributing the funds, Roger Baldwin reached out to the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Russell Sage foundations to determine how those philanthropies handled grant requests.

Foster, Lewis Gannett, Benjamin Gitlow, Clinton S. Golden, James Weldon Johnson, Freda Kirchwey, Clarina Michelson, Robert Morss Lovett, Scott Nearing, and Norman M. Thomas.