ABSTRACT
George Peabody and Mrs. Russell Sage had encountered little or no opposition in the setting up of their foundations. John D. Rockefeller, and other individuals in the forefront of the country's industrialization had accumulated vast wealth far overshadowing that acquired by Peabody and inherited by Mrs. Sage. During the interim period between the two world wars there was one major study of foundations conducted in the 1930s, by an individual, Eduard C. Lindeman. In the early 1960s, the Treasury Department launched an extensive study of private foundations and the tax laws pertaining to them. In 1964 the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Finance of the Senate requested the Treasury Department to prepare a report on the activities, particularly those of a tax and financial nature, of private foundations and forward its conclusions and recommendations to the committees.
