ABSTRACT
FREDERICK T. GATES WAS A MAN OF remarkable qualities. A former Baptist minister, he became the principal adviser in business and philanthropy of John D. Rockefeller. He combined bold imagination and large horizons with shrewd business capacity and driving energy. In a candid bit of portraiture, he described himself in 1891 as “eager, impetuous, insistent, and withal exacting and irritable.” 1 * In addition it may be said that he was fearless, often fiery in his words, powerful in exhortation, with a mind that was too precipitous to be always tolerant, and with a voice that thundered from Sinai. At his last meeting as a trustee of The Rockefeller Foundation in 1923, he made a farewell speech. Shaking his fist at a somewhat startled but respectfully attentive Board, he vociferated: “When you die and come to approach the judgment of Almighty God, what do you think He will demand of you? Do you for an instant presume to believe that He will inquire into your petty failures or your trivial virtues? No! He will ask just one question: ‘What did you do as a Trustee of The Rockefeller Foundation?’” 2
