capitol--reports which purport to give
general news, but which in fact contain arguments in support of the
schemes which the bureaus are organized to advance. This ingenious
method of misleading the public is only a part of the general plan
which favor-holding and favor-seeking corporations pursue.

Demosthenes declared that the man who refuses a bribe conquers the
man who offers it. According to this, the journalist who resists the
many temptations which come to him to surrender his ideals has the
consciousness of winning a moral victory as well as the satisfaction
of knowing that he is rendering a real service to his fellows.

The profession for which I was trained--the law--presents another
line of temptations. The court room is a soul's market where many
barter away their ideals in the hope of winning wealth or fame.
Lawyers sometimes boast of the number of men whose acquittal they
have secured when they knew them to be guilty, and of advantages won
which they knew their clients did not deserve. I do not understand
how a lawyer can so boast, for he is an officer of the court and, as
such, is sworn to assist in the administration of justice. When a
lawyer has helped his client to obtain all that he really deserves
he has done his full duty as a lawyer, and if he goes beyond this,
he goes at his own peril. Show me a lawyer who has spent a lifetime
trying to obscure the line between right and wrong, trying to prove
that to be just which he knew to be unjust, and I will show you a man
who has grown weaker in character year by year, and whose advice, at
last, will be of no value to his clients, for he will have lost the
power to discern between right and wrong. Show me, on the other hand,
a lawyer who has spent a lifetime in the search for truth, determined
to follow where it leads, and I will show you a man who has grown
stronger in character day by day and whose advice constantly becomes
more valuable to his clients, because the power to discern the truth
increases with the honest search for it.

Not only in the court room, but in the consultation chamber the
lawyer sometimes yields to the temptation to turn his talents to a
sordid use. The schemes of spoliation that defy the officers of the
law are, for the most part, inaugurated and directed by legal minds.
President Roosevelt, speaking at Harvard a few years ago, complained
that the graduates of that great university frequently furnished the
brains for conspirac