How vitally important it is, therefore, that the expenditure should go as far as possible and be used with the greatest intelligence! I have been frank to say that I believe in the spirit of combination and cooeperation when properly and fairly conducted in the world of commercial affairs, on the principle that it helps to reduce waste; and waste is a dissipation of power.

I sincerely hope and thoroughly believe that this same principle will eventually prevail in the art of giving as it does in business.

It is not merely the tendency of the times developed by more exacting conditions in industry, but it should make its most effective appeal to the hearts of the people who are striving to do the most good to the largest number.
SOME UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES At the risk of making this chapter very dull, and I am told that this is a fault which inexperienced authors should avoid at all hazards, I may perhaps be pardoned if I set down here some of the fundamental principles which have been at the bottom of all my own plans.

I have undertaken no work of any importance for many years which, in a general way, has not followed out these broad lines, and I believe no really constructive effort can be made in philanthropic work without such a well-defined and consecutive purpose.
My own conversion to the feeling that an organized plan was an absolute necessity came about in this way.
About the year 1890 I was still following the haphazard fashion of giving here and there as appeals presented themselves.

I investigated as I could, and worked myself almost to a nervous break-down in groping my way, without sufficient guide or chart, through this ever-widening field of philanthropic endeavour.