will have abolished war, prisons, injustice, rebellion, and our other social
sufferings." Private property, he said, was "the main cause of our unrest and
unhappiness." While his refusal of wealth seemed aberrant, his concurrent
public repudiation of enforced monogamy and his statement that
conventional churches were "full of hypocrisy" received equal attention and
widespread disfavor. ⁴

Against his will, this odd young man became a celebrity at the start of
the decade in which celebrity would become an obsession. A. Philip
Randolph, a socialist, did not admire Garland's rejection of his inheritance.
If Garland felt strongly about his philosophy, Randolph wrote in the
Messenger, the young heir should use the money to spread his beliefs. "It is
not laudable intellectual martyrdom; it is not a praiseworthy trait, it is not an
expression of sterling character; it is just a symptom of a simpleton--the
irrefutable evidence of a mental 'nut'!" ⁵

Upton Sinclair also urged Garland to accept the money. Writing from
Pasadena, Sinclair scolded Garland, whom he had never met, for his rigidity
and his excessive purity about money, quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson's
dictum that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds." Never
in the history of the radical movement "has anybody had a million dollars or
a tenth part of that," he wrote. Urging Garland to take the money and do
good with it, he suggested specific organizations and individuals who would
agree with Garland's dislike of "the system" and would benefit enormously
by his largesse. ⁶

Although Garland continued to refuse the inheritance for another year, it
is entirely possible that Sinclair had at least planted a seed by suggesting,
not nebulous charity, but $100,000 each to Max Eastman for the Liberator;
the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, which Sinclair had helped found; the
socialists' New York Call; the left-wing Federated Press news service; Allen
Benson, Socialist Party candidate for president in 1916, for his magazine
Reconstruction; Roger Baldwin for the newly organized American Civil
Liberties Union; and the American Union against Militarism. ⁷ Most of those
on Sinclair's list would, indeed, eventually benefit from Garland's inheri-
tance.

Among the radicals trying to keep progressive organizations functioning
during the post-World War I reaction, (with the hope of reviving a militant
working class), Roger Baldwin believed, as did many others, that Garland's
rejected inheritance could have a significant impact in aiding those
organizations that were striving to bring about a new social order. Sometime
during 1921, Baldwin sought out Garland through an unnamed "mutual
friend," probably Walter Nelles, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties
Union and a law partner of Swinburne Hale, who had married Garland's
mother in early 1921. Baldwin's ability to charm (some would say
manipulate) has often been noted, and his prewar experience working with
troubled youth helped him win the young man's confidence. ⁸

Baldwin persuaded Garland to accept the legacy and to entrust to him
and like-minded colleagues its administration through a "national trust fund,"
tentatively called by Baldwin the National Service Fund, which would assist
"pioneer" enterprises "directed to social and economic freedom." The trust
fund would aid efforts "which contribute most directly to individual liberty

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