lishment is raided by the police. If such words mean
anything they mean that those whose sentiments they represent stand
against the effort to bring about a moral regeneration of business which
will prevent a repetition of the insurance, banking, and street railroad
scandals in New York; a repetition of the Chicago and Alton deal; a
repetition of the combination between certain professional politicians,
certain professional labor leaders and certain big financiers from the
disgrace of which San Francisco has just been rescued; a repetition of
the successful efforts by the Standard Oil people to crush out every
competitor, to overawe the common carriers, and to establish a monopoly
which treats the public with the contempt which the public deserves so
long as it permits men like the public men of whom I speak to represent
it in politics, men like the heads of colleges to whom I refer to
educate its youth. The outcry against stopping dishonest practices among
the very wealthy is precisely similar to the outcry raised against every
effort for cleanliness and decency in city government because, forsooth,
it will "hurt business." The same outcry is made against the Department
of Justice for prosecuting the heads of colossal corporations that is
made against the men who in San Francisco are prosecuting with impartial
severity the wrongdoers among business men, public officials, and labor
leaders alike. The principle is the same in the two cases. Just as
the blackmailer and the bribe giver stand on the same evil eminence
of infamy, so the man who makes an enormous fortune by corrupting
Legislatures and municipalities and fleecing his stockholders and the
public stands on a level with the creature who fattens on the blood
money of the gambling house, the saloon and the brothel. Moreover,
both kinds of corruption in the last analysis are far more intimately
connected than would at first sight appear; the wrong-doing is at bottom
the same. Corrupt business and corrupt politics act and react, with
ever increasing debasement, one on the other; the rebate-taker, the
franchise-trafficker, the manipulator of securities, the purveyor and
protector of vice, the black-mailing ward boss, the ballot box stuffer,
the demagogue, the mob leader, the hired bully and mankiller, all alike
work at the same web of corruption, and all alike should be abhorred by
honest men.

The "business" which is hurt by the movement for honesty is the kind of
bu