Part 7

¶The problems which we of America have to face to-day are very serious, but we will do well to remember that after all they are only part of the price which we have to pay for the triumphs we have won, for the high position to which we have attained. If we were a backward and stationary country we would not have to face these problems at all, but I think that most of us are agreed that to be backward and stationary would be altogether too heavy a price to pay for the avoidance of the problems in question.

¶There are no labor troubles where there is no work to be done by labor. There are no troubles about corporations where the poverty of the community is such that it is not worth while to form corporations. There is no difficulty in regulating railroads where the resources of a region are so few that it does not pay to build railroads. There are many excellent people who shake their heads over the difficulties that as a Nation we now have to face; but their melancholy is not warranted save in a very partial degree, for most of the things of which they complain are the inevitable accompaniments of the growth and greatness of which we are proud.

¶There is every reason why we should be vigilant in searching out what is wrong and unflinchingly resolute in striving to remedy it. But at the same time we must not blind ourselves to what has been accomplished for good, and above all we must not lose our heads and become either hysterical or rancorous in grappling with what is bad.

¶Take such a question, for instance, as the question, or rather the group of questions, connected with the growth of corporations in this country. This growth has meant, of course, the growth of individual fortunes. Undoubtedly the growth of wealth in this country has had some very unfortunate accompaniments, but it seems to me that much the worse damage that people of wealth can do the rest of us is not any actual physical harm, but the awakening in our breasts of either the mean vice of worshipping mere wealth, and the man of mere wealth, for the wealth’s sake, or the equally mean vice of viewing with rancorous envy and hatred the men of wealth merely because they are men of wealth.

¶Envy is, of course, merely a kind of crooked admiration, and we often see the very man who in public is most intemperate in his denunciation of wealth in his private life most eager to obtain wealth, in no matter what fashion, and at no matter what moral cost.

¶It is impossible too strongly to insist upon what ought to be the patent fact that it is not only in the interest of the people of wealth themselves, but in our interest, in the interest of the public as a whole, that they should be treated fairly and justly; that if they show exceptional business ability they should be given exceptional reward for that ability.

¶The tissues of our industrial fabric are interwoven in such complex fashion that what strengthens or weakens part also strengthens or weakens the whole.

¶If we penalize industry we will ourselves in the end have to pay a considerable part of the penalty. If we make conditions such that the men of exceptional ability are able to secure marked benefits by the exercise of that ability, then we shall ourselves benefit somewhat. It is our interest no less than our duty to treat them fairly.

¶On the other hand, it is no less their interest to treat us fairly—by “us” I mean the great body of the people, the men of moderate or small fortunes, the farmers, the wage-workers, the smaller business men and professional men.

¶The man of great means who achieves fortune by crooked methods does wrong to the whole body politic. But he not merely does wrong to, he becomes a source of imminent danger to other men of great means; for his ill-won success tends to arouse a feeling of resentment, which if it becomes inflamed, fails to differentiate between the men of wealth who have done decently and the men of wealth who have not done decently.

¶The conscience of our people has been deeply shocked by the revelations made of recent years as to the way in which some of the great fortunes have been obtained and used, and there is, I think, in the minds of the people at large a strong feeling that a serious effort must be made to put a stop to the cynical dishonesty and contempt for right which have thus been revealed.

¶I believe that something, and I hope that a good deal, can be done by law to remedy the state of things complained of. But when all that can be has thus been done, there will yet remain much which the law cannot touch, and which must be reached by the force of public opinion.

¶There are men who do not divide actions merely into those that are honest and those that are not, but create a third subdivision—that of law honesty; of that kind of honesty which consists in keeping clear of the penitentiary. It is hard to reach astute men of this type save by making them feel the weight of an honest public indignation.

¶We can not afford in this country to draw the distinction as between rich man and poor man. The distinction upon which we must insist is the vital, deep-lying, unchangeable distinction between the honest man and the dishonest man, between the man who acts decently and fairly by his neighbor and with a quick sense of his obligations, and the man who acknowledges no internal law save that of his own will and appetite. Above all we should treat with a peculiarly contemptuous abhorrence the man who in a spirit of sheer cynicism debauches either our business life or our political life.

¶There are men who use the word “practical politics” as merely a euphemism for dirty politics, and it is such men who have brought the word “politician” into discredit. There are other men who use the noxious phrase “business is business” as an excuse and justification for every kind of mean and crooked work, and these men make honest Americans hang their heads because of some of the things they do.

¶It is the duty of every honest patriot to rebuke in emphatic fashion alike the politician who does not understand that the only kind of “practical politics” which a nation can with safety tolerate is that kind which we know as clean politics, and that we are as severe in our condemnation of the business trickery which succeeds as of the business trickery which fails. The scoundrel who fails can never by any possibility be as dangerous to the community as the scoundrel who succeeds, and of all the men in the country the worst citizens, those who should excite in our minds the most contemptuous abhorrence, are the men who have achieved great wealth, or any other form of success, in any save a clean and straightforward manner.

A Square Deal and The Farmer

Conditions have changed in the country far less than they have changed in the cities, and in consequence there has been little breaking away from the methods of life which have produced the great majority of the leaders of the Republic in the past. Almost all our great Presidents have been brought up in the country, and most of them worked hard on the farms in their youth and got their early mental training in the healthy democracy of farm life.

¶The forces which made these farm bred boys leaders of men when they had come to their full manhood are still at work in our country districts. Self-help and individual initiative remain to a peculiar degree typical of life in the country, life on a farm, in a lumbering camp, on a ranch. Neither the farmers nor their hired hands can work through combinations as readily as the capitalists or wage-workers of cities can work.

¶It must not be understood from this that there has been no change in farming and farm life. The contrary is the case. There has been much change, much progress. The granges and similar organizations, the farmers’ institutes, and all the agencies which promote intelligent co-operation and give opportunity for social and intellectual intercourse among the farmers, have played a large part in raising the level of life and work in the country districts.

¶In the domain of government, the Department of Agriculture since its foundation has accomplished results as striking as those obtained under any other branch of the national administration. By scientific study of all matters connected with the advancement of farm life; by experimental stations: by the use of trained agents, sent to the uttermost countries of the globe; by the practical application of anything which in theory has been demonstrated to be efficient; in these ways, and in many others, great good has been accomplished in raising the standard of productiveness in farm work throughout the country.

¶We live in an age when the best results can only be achieved, if to individual self-help, we add the mutual self-help which comes by combination, both of citizens in their individual capacity and of citizens working through the State as an instrument. The farmers of the country have grown more and more to realize this, and farming has tended more and more to take its place as an applied science—though as with everything else the theory must be tested in practical work and can avail only when applied in practical fashion.

¶But after all this has been said it remains true that the countryman—the man on the farm, more than any other of our citizens to-day, is called upon continually to exercise the qualities which we like to think of as typical of the United States throughout its history—the qualities of rugged independence, masterful resolution, and individual energy and resourcefulness. He works hard (for which no man is to be pitied), and often he lives hard (which may not be pleasant): but his life is passed in healthy surroundings, surroundings which tend to develop a fine type of citizenship. In the country moreover, the conditions are fortunately such as to allow a closer touch between man and man, than, too often, we find to be the case in the city. Men feel more vividly the underlying sense of brotherhood of community of interest. I do not mean by this that there are not plenty of problems connected with life in our rural districts. There are many problems; and great wisdom and earnest disinterestedness in effort are needed for their solution.

¶¶After all, we are one people, with the same fundamental characteristics, whether we live in the city or in the country, in the East or in the West, in the North or in the South. Each of us, unless he is contented to be a cumberer of the earth’s surface, must strive to do his life work with his whole heart. Each must remember that while he will be noxious to every one unless he first do his duty by himself, he must also strive ever to do his duty by his fellow. The problem of how to do these duties is acute everywhere. It is most acute in great cities, but it exists in the country too. A man to be a good citizen, must first be a good breadwinner, a good husband, a good father—I hope the father of many children; just as a woman’s first duty is to be a good housewife and mother. The business duties, the home duties, the duties to one’s family come first. The couple who bring up plenty of healthy children, who leave behind them many sons and daughters fitted in their turn to be good citizens, emphatically deserve well of the State.

¶But duty to one’s self and one’s family does not exclude duty to one’s neighbor. Each of us, rich or poor, can help his neighbor at times; and to do this he must be brought up in touch with him, into sympathy with him. Any effort is to be welcomed that brings people closer together, so as to secure a better understanding among those whose walks of life are in ordinary circumstances far apart.

¶Probably the good done is almost equally great on both sides, no matter which one may seem to be helping the other. But it must be kept in mind that no good will be accomplished at all by any philanthropic or charitable work, unless it is done along certain definite lines. In the first place, if the work is done in a spirit of condescension it would be better never to attempt it. It is almost as irritating to be patronized as to be wronged. The only safe way of working is to try to find out some scheme by which it is possible to make a common effort for the common good. Each of us needs at times to have a helping hand stretched out to him or her.

Every one of us slips on some occasion, shame to his fellow who then refuses to stretch out the hand that should always be ready to help the man who stumbles. It is our duty to lift him up; but it is also our duty to remember that there is no earthly use in trying to carry him. If a man will submit to being carried, that is sufficient to show that he is not worth carrying. In the long run, the only kind of help that really avails is the help which teaches a man to help himself. Such help every man who has been blessed in life should try to give to those who are less fortunate, and such help can be accepted with entire self-respect.

¶The aim to set before ourselves in trying to aid one another is to give that aid under conditions which will harm no man’s self-respect and which will teach the less fortunate how to help themselves as their stronger brothers do. To give such aid it is necessary not only to possess the right kind of heart, but also the right kind of head. Hardness of heart is a dreadful quality, but it is doubtful whether, in the long run, it works more damage than softness of head. At any rate both are undesirable. The prerequisite to doing good work in the field of philanthropy—in the field of social effort, undertaken with one’s fellows for the common good—is that it shall be undertaken in a spirit of broad sanity no less than of broad and loving charity.