The Dutch $1 billion philanthropist Van Leer Group Foundation focuses on helping young children. It has blazed a trail by spending 95% of its grant money outside its home country.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Bavarian machinery company his grandfather set up in 1901, Richard Scheubeck and the firm’s other family owners decided to create a charitable foundation. They put in $1.1 million, and Scheubeck encouraged the company’s suppliers and business partners to make donations. With more than…

In the NL., committed to the welfare idea, 1.4 million beneficiaries of state aid, a potent political force, have so far managed to blunt major attempts at social services reform in parliament.

A humanitarian dream becomes an economic nightmare

They are called welfare states, after the sense of collective compassion that inspired them in the wake of the Great Depression and World War II. Like Gothic cathedrals, they rose gradually across Western Europe, in dedication to a lofty goal: to create more…

The one shining exception to Europe’s spendthrift ways is The Netherlands. With climbed production, cutted taxes and dropped import controls Dutch national debt cut 25% to $5.3 billion.

FOR Western Europe’s factories, 1955 was the biggest postwar year. Production of steel, autos, chemicals, coal products and other goods soared to new records. In its latest report, the European Payments Union, clearinghouse of trade for 17 nations, said that free Europe’s combined industrial production index went up from 127…