oration is that public man who will just as surely protect the
corporation itself from wrongful aggression. If a public man is willing
to yield to popular clamor and do wrong to the men of wealth or to rich
corporations, it may be set down as certain that if the opportunity
comes he will secretly and furtively do wrong to the public in the
interest of a corporation.

But, in addition to honesty, we need sanity. No honesty will make a
public man useful if that man is timid or foolish, if he is a hot-headed
zealot or an impracticable visionary. As we strive for reform we find
that it is not at all merely the case of a long uphill pull. On the
contrary, there is almost as much of breeching work as of collar work;
to depend only on traces means that there will soon be a runaway and an
upset. The men of wealth who to-day are trying to prevent the regulation
and control of their business in the interest of the public by the
proper Government authorities will not succeed, in my judgment, in
checking the progress of the movement. But if they did succeed they
would find that they had sown the wind and would surely reap the
whirlwind, for they would ultimately provoke the violent excesses which
accompany a reform coming by convulsion instead of by steady and natural
growth.

On the other hand, the wild preachers of unrest and discontent, the wild
agitators against the entire existing order, the men who act crookedly,
whether because of sinister design or from mere puzzleheadedness, the
men who preach destruction without proposing any substitute for what
they intend to destroy, or who propose a substitute which would be far
worse than the existing evils--all these men are the most dangerous
opponents of real reform. If they get their way, they will lead the
people into a deeper pit than any into which they could fall under the
present system. If they fail to get their way, they will still do
incalculable harm by provoking the kind of reaction which, in its revolt
against the senseless evil of their teaching, would enthrone more
securely than ever the very evils which their misguided followers
believe they are attacking.

More important than aught else is the development of the broadest
sympathy of man for man. The welfare of the wage-worker, the welfare of
the tiller of the soil, upon these depend the welfare of the entire
country; their good is not to be sought in pulling down others; but
their good must be the prime object of