Chapter III: Part 3

In the century which is now well open we shall have to use the legislative power of the state to make conditions better and more even as between man and man. Our aim must be to control the big corporation so that while it earns an ample reward upon its investment it gives to the public in return an ample service for the reward it receives. More and more we must shape conditions so that each man shall have a fair chance in life; that so far as we can bring it about--I do not mean to say that we can bring it about absolutely but insofar as we can approximately bring it about--each man shall start in life on a measurable equality of opportunity with other men, unhelped by privilege himself, unhindered by privilege in others. Now understand me: I do not mean for a moment that we should try to bring about the impossible and undesirable condition, of giving to all men equality of reward. As long as human nature is what it is there will be inequality of service, and where there is inequality of service there ought to be inequality of reward. That is justice. Equal reward for unequal service is injustice. All I am trying to help bring about is such a condition of affairs that there shall be measurable approximation to a higher reward than at present for the right kind of service, and a less reward than at present for some forms of activity that do not represent real service at all. There must be an opportunity for each man to show the stuff that is in him. But in the last analysis he must help himself. Every one of us stumbles at times. There is not a man here who does not at times stumble; and when that is the case shame on his brother who will not stretch out a helping hand to him. Help him up; but when he has been helped up then it is his duty and business to walk for himself. Help him up; but if he lies down, you cannot carry him. You will not do any good to him and you will interfere with your own usefulness to yourself and to others.

Our whole governmental policy should be shaped to secure a more even justice as between man and man, and better conditions such as will permit each man to do the best there is in him. In other words, our governmental ideal is to secure as far as possible the even distribution of justice--using the word justice in its largest and finest sense. You cannot secure justice if you haven’t just and upright public servants. You cannot secure great reforms if the fountain head from which the reforms are to come is corrupt. Our democracy in this our country now approximates the hundred million limit of population; our great democracy has great and complex needs; we need to have wise men, far-sighted men in public office, so that they may study those needs, and, so far as may be, meet them. But no wisdom in a public servant will avail if the public servant is not honest; and he will not be honest unless the public both demands and practices honesty.

I plead for honesty in the public servant, and I plead for it strongly. We need ability and intelligence to help us solve the problems with which as a nation we are face to face. We cannot solve them without ability, without intelligence. But what we need most of all is honesty, honesty in our people and honesty in our representatives. And woe to us as a nation if we do not have the honesty, the uprightness, the desire to treat each man with wise and generous and considerate justice.

Last year I was in the Old World, and wherever I went I encountered two phases of feeling that seemed contradictory. In the first place, wherever I went I found the man who felt that he had been unjustly treated in life looking eagerly toward this country as a country where the ideal of justice between man and man had been at least partially realized. And everywhere I went I found also, oh, my friends, a very different feeling, a feeling of doubt and mistrust among our friends and admirers because of what they had heard of our lack of integrity and honesty in public and in business affairs. I wish that our people could realize that every time word is sent abroad of political or business corruption or mob violence in this country, it saddens the heart of all believers in popular government, everywhere; and it is a subject for sneering mirth to every reactionary, to every man who disbelieves that the people can control themselves and do justice both to themselves and to others. I do not suppose that if we come short in our duty, if we are uninfluenced by the appeal made to us for our own sakes and for the sake of our children, we can be moved by an appeal made for other people. Yet I believe that every man who has the inestimable privilege of living here in our free land should feel in his soul, deep in the marrow of his being, that not only are we bound to act justly and honorably and honestly as a nation for our own sakes, not only are we bound so to act for the sake of the children who are to come after us, but that we are also bound thus to act because all over the world the peoples are looking eagerly at this great experiment in popular government; and shame to us, woe to us, if our conduct dims the golden hope of the nations of mankind.

THE SHAPING OF PUBLIC OPINION AND THE NINTH COMMANDMENT

Today in making my last speech to you I wish to thank you from my heart for the way in which you have listened to me.

It had not occurred to me that people would come in numbers sufficient to fill every corner of this theatre. You have made me both very grateful and a little embarrassed. You have made me feel more than a little humble; because each time I saw the audience I was afraid that they would go away feeling that they had not received just what they had a right to expect; because, friends, after all, the message I have to give to you is so very simple, and its worth depends so purely upon the spirit in which I give it and you take it.

What I have to say amounts to absolutely nothing if it does not represent at least an honest effort on my part to live up to what I preach, and if it does not represent a purpose on your part to act on whatever of my words you think it worth while to applaud. Of course, what I have to say is simple because the great facts of life are simple; and I am speaking to you, my fellow citizens, my fellow Americans, whom I trust and in whom I believe, about the elemental needs that are common to all of us, and vital to all of us.

A cultivated and intellectual paper once complained that my speeches lacked subtlety. So they do! I think that the command or entreaty to clean living and decent politics should no more be subtle than a command in battle should be subtle. You veterans, over there, what you wanted to have your officer say, when in a tight place was “Come on, boys”; and it was no use his saying it unless he went himself. The most admirable address that could possibly be delivered by an officer on the field would be hopelessly marred if immediately afterwards the officer went to the rear; and no heartiness of enthusiasm on the part of the soldiers who listened to the address would atone if they then failed to go forward.

The purpose of the command or the entreaty or the adjuration of the officer was to make his men go forward. The exact language that Sheridan used when he came back from Winchester and met his men going the wrong way matters little from the classical standpoint; the point was that after hearing it the men began to go the right way; and they would not have gone the right way if he had not been going the right way himself. In war, and in peace also, words are of use only as they are translated into deeds.

All I have to say to you here is very simple; and yet it is all important. Any good that will come from it to you will come only if you really do think of what I have said, and then, if it agrees with your judgment, if you try to act a little closer to the right standard than hithertofore you have been doing. And right here I want to say that you in your turn have put me under a bond of obligation; for after having spoken to you as I have spoken for these five days I realize that I must myself try to make my conduct square absolutely with my words and I realize also that I have more to learn than to teach.

As I say, I would like you to test what I have to say by your own experiences. The first day I spoke of applied ethics, of realizable ideals. I spoke in favor of having a lofty ideal which could be lived up to. Let me apply what I have to say by instances taken from the Civil War, from the experience of the men in blue and the men in gray--for they are all brothers now. It was of no use for a man to enter the army if he was not actuated by a lofty ideal; unless he had the right kind of ideal of personal conduct, unless he was ashamed to flinch, ashamed to disgrace himself in battle or on the march, then he was of no use in the army. It was necessary that he should have the right kind of ideal. But it was even more necessary that he should apply that ideal in practice. I do not care how lofty his theory of conduct was, that theory was useless if when he heard the bullets he was unable to control his tendency to run away. The soldier needed a lofty ideal, and he needed to apply that ideal. It had to be an ideal that he could measurably realize on the field of battle. It must be just so with us in civil life. We must have a lofty ideal of conduct; and we must strive to realize that ideal in practice. That was my first day’s lecture.

The tone of my second lecture was that the man must do well in his own home before he can do well outside; that the man must be a decent husband and father, decent in the performance of his duty toward those with whom he is most intimately brought into contact, before he can hope to amount to anything in the world at large.

On the third day I spoke of what has been for many centuries the great guide to righteousness and clean living.

Yesterday I spoke of the public man, of his cardinal virtue, honesty, and of the relations of the public to the public man. Let me again there take an example from the army. I spoke of the right feeling to have toward the successful man and of the right feeling for the individuals in the community to bear towards one another. They are just such feelings as the soldiers of the Civil War bore to their chiefs and to one another. No soldier worth his salt grudged the preference, the honor, the reward that came to great Generals such as Grant and Sheridan and Sherman, such as Lee and Johnson and Stonewall Jackson. They not only did not grudge any reward that came to a man because he earned it, but they scorned the creature who did grudge such reward. It was not only a matter of justice, it was to their own interest to see the fighting General, the General who could carry on a campaign and fight a battle successfully put high up. It was to the interest of the army and the country that that man should be rewarded. What the soldiers grudged was a reward coming to a man who had not earned it, a reward coming to a General, not because he was a first class General in the field, but because he had pulled wires in Washington, because he was so and so’s friend and had such and such influences behind him, so that he was shoved up over the head of a better man. That type of promotion they grudged because that type of promotion was not earned by service.

It is just so with us in private life and in public life. It is a scandal and a shame to grudge the reward that comes to the big man who earns a fortune by rendering service to his fellows, service of such a kind that for every dollar he gets he has done at least a dollar’s worth of good to someone else. It is to the interest of all of us to encourage that man. It is eminently to our interest, however, to discourage the man whose fortune represents not serving the public but swindling the public. And again it is to our interest to discourage the fortune that represents service, but service overpaid ten or one hundred times. So much for the men at the top. Now for the men in the ranks. What the soldier--whether he wore the uniform of the Northerner or the Southerner, whether he served in the Federal or in the Confederate armies--what the soldier was concerned with knowing about his bunky, about the man who stood by him, who marched by him was not whether he was a banker or a bricklayer--he had no concern as to whether the comrade had much money or little, as to how he earned his livelihood, or how he worshipped his Creator--but only whether that man when an emergency came would “stay put.” When the fight came he did not wish to have to look over his shoulder to see if his comrade was still there; he wished to be certain on that point, and to be able to devote his undivided attention to the enemy. In camp and on the march he wished to be sure that the man who was his comrade would not shirk part of the job. If this man acted up to the requirements of a good comrade, if he was a man to be trusted in battle and on the march, if he was a man who could be counted upon to do his part and a little more than his part in whatever emergency arose, then the soldier worth his salt, stood by his comrade and recognized in him a man entitled to be trusted in battle and on the march. If the comrade was a man who could be counted upon to do his part, and a little more than his part, in whatever emergency arose, then the other stood by him and recognized in him a man entitled to every demand that comradeship could exact.

It should be just so in civil life. Shame to our people if they ever come to pay loyalty to cast or class ahead of loyalty to good citizenship. I have no patience with the man, whether a multi-millionaire or a wage-worker, whether the member of a big corporation or the member of a labor union, who does not recognize the fact that as an American citizen his first loyalty is due to the nation, and to his fellow citizens no matter what position they occupy as long as those fellow citizens are decent men. His first loyalty must be to the nation and to decency in citizenship. He cannot be a good citizen if he puts loyalty to any other organization above loyalty to the nation, if he puts loyalty to any class above loyalty to good citizenship as such.

Having spoken yesterday of the public men and the eighth commandment today I speak about the disseminator of information to the public and the ninth commandment.

The public man occupies a very important position, a very responsible position. He deserves cordial praise if he does well, and the heartiest condemnation if he does badly. But after all, in a country like ours, where public opinion rules, he does not occupy quite so important a position as the shaper of public opinion, that is, as the man who by speech or writing--especially in the magazines and newspapers--seeks to tell his countrymen what the facts are about public and private questions, about public and private men.

The cardinal sin of the public man is theft. The cardinal sin of the public writer is mendacity. I abhor a thief, and I abhor a liar as much as I abhor a thief. I abhor the assassin who tries to kill a man; I abhor almost equally the assassin of that man’s character. The infamy of the creature who tries to assassinate an upright and honest public servant doing his duty is no greater than the infamy of the creature who tries to assassinate an honest man’s character, and who irretrievably damages the public by destroying their faith in the man who should have their confidence, and mind you, when I speak of the wrong done by this type of slanderous perverter of truth, I wish to dwell upon the fact that I am not concerned primarily with the wrong done to the man whom he slanders. That is bad enough; but my chief concern is the wrong he does to the public whom he teaches to think crookedly.

The newspaper man or writer in a magazine who sustains the crook shares the crook’s guilt. The newspaper which upholds the briber, the corrupter of legislators, the man who buys a seat in a legislative body, or buys an executive position--the newspaper man who upholds the crooked judge, the crooked legislator or executive officer, who upholds the public servant who betrays his duty, that newspaper writer or magazine writer is himself as guilty morally as the man whom he defends. No more praise-worthy, no more indispensible service can be rendered than that of the man who truthfully and fearlessly exposes corruption in the high places of political and business life. But remember also that the converse is true. Evil though dishonesty is, it is hardly worse than false accusation of dishonesty against the honest man. I am speaking only from the standpoint of the honest man who is falsely accused. The honest man of strength and courage is probably fairly well able to take care of himself. If the honest man is fit for public life he will have a fairly thick skin and will view with a certain grim contempt the accusations of the men who, we know, have either been bought to accuse him or are earning their livelihood in the lowest and meanest of all ways, by the practice of mendacity for hire--and incidentally, the offense is just as great if they lie to gratify the spirit of sensationalism as if they lie because they are bought.

Muckrakers who rake up much that ought to be raked up deserve well of the community and the magazines and newspapers who publish their writings do a public service. But they must write the truth and the service they do must be real. The type of magazine which I condemn is what may be called the Ananias muckraker type. No paper bought and owned by the special interests can be viler, or can play a more contemptible part in American politics, than the Ananias muckraker type of magazine, the type of magazine where the proprietor, editor and writer seek to earn their livelihood by telling what they know to be scandalous falsehoods about honest men. No boodling Alderman, no convicted private or public thief serving his term in stripes in the penitentiary is a baser and more degraded being than the writers of whom I speak. And they render this ill service, this worst of bad services to the public; they confuse the mind of the public as between honest and dishonest men. Every time that an honest man is falsely accused of dishonesty you give heart to every rogue. There is nothing that a dishonest man revels in more than a false accusation against his honest compeers; for if you attack enough honest men with sufficient violence you finally utterly confuse the public mind, you make the average decent citizen wholly unable to tell the true attack from the false, the honest public servant from the dishonest public servant; and in the end you get him to believe that the white men are not white and that the black men are not black, but that they are all gray, and that it does not make much difference which of them you support.

Such a feeling is absolutely fatal to the achievement of good citizenship. If you once get the public so thoroughly confused and disheartened and skeptical that on the one hand it does not believe that any man is good, and on the other hand tends to excuse every bad man on the ground “Oh, well, I guess he’s no worse than the rest, they are all pretty bad;” if you once get the public in such a frame of mind you have done more than can be done in any other way towards ruining our citizenship, towards ruining popular and governmental honesty and efficiency.

I hope and believe that, as the people at large more and more take into their own hands the shaping of legislation, and try to shape legislation directly, they will recognize the fact that the man who poisons their minds is as thoroughly reprehensible a scoundrel--and when I say scoundrel I am speaking with scientific precision and with moderation--as the man who poisons their bodies.

President Wheeler alluded to the fact that I had been able to get through the Pure Food Law. It was one of the achievements during my administration of which I felt we all had a right to be proud. We got it through in the teeth of the opposition of the multitude of men who were making fortunes by the sale of adulterated foods, and who owed much of their wealth to the fact that in the absence of law they could sell their goods by a label which did not correspond to the contents of the package. We had to face the opposition not only of the men in that business themselves but of the newspapers and the magazines which did the advertising for that kind of business; and the opposition was so powerful that it was six years before I was able to secure the passage of a law which gave us a reasonable chance to see that if food was bought for a baby the food was not poisoned.

Now I hope in the end to see legislation which will punish the circulation of untruth, and above all of slanderous untruth, in a newspaper or magazine meant to be read by the public; which will punish such action as severely as we punish the introduction into commerce of adulterated food falsely described and meant to be eaten by the public.

At present men sufficiently wealthy to pay for slander and libel and the other men wishing to earn a base livelihood by pandering to the taste of those who like to read slander and libel can undoubtedly do an enormous quantity of damage to the upright public servant. But keep in mind that I am not concerned with him; I am speaking from the standpoint of the public. The enormous damage, the incredible damage, is done to the public, by completely misinforming them as to the character of the decent public servant, and also misinforming them as to the character of that man in public life who is an unworthy public servant. I will give you an example out of my own personal experience during the last three years to show the kind of conduct with which we have to reckon on the part of some of the newspapers.

One of the papers of notoriety in New York is the “New York Herald;” it is published by Mr. James Gordon Bennett. Whatever distinction it has is implied in its being the founder, the beginner, of the school of purely sensational yellow journalism in New York. Mr. James Gordon Bennett was born in America. He possesses one redeeming characteristic, he lives abroad; he lives in Paris. While I was President and while I had as District Attorney in New York a man named Harry Stimson--one of the best public servants in the country--all kinds of cases of very great importance came up for action in his district. I put Harry Stimson in as District Attorney because I knew we would have to take action against a number of very powerful corporations and individuals, who would have at their command the very best legal talent that money could get. I wanted to be sure that when the trial day came Uncle Sam’s man would be just as good as the men against him.

We did various things. You may recollect that about eight years ago they used to say that you couldn’t put a rich man in the penitentiary. Well, we put several rich men in the penitentiary. Harry Stimson put the wealthy man, Morse, in the penitentiary. He brought to a successful conclusion the proceedings against the Sugar Trust, partly for rebates and partly for swindling the United States Government by debauching Custom House employees; he recovered, and had paid into the United States Treasury, between two and three millions of dollars in fines from the Sugar Trust for its misconduct. (It is perhaps unnecessary to add that when Stimson ran for Governor last year the Sugar Trust and every kindred business organization in Wall Street stated that he was “unsafe for the business interests”). He conducted several of such suits. Among other matters his attention was brought to the fact that the “New York Herald” was carrying a “personal” column of the vilest description. He sued in person James Gordon Bennett, the editor and proprietor of the “Herald” for violation of the law against circulating obscene literature through the mails. Mr. Bennett was living in Paris. As soon as it became evident that we intended to fight the suit to a conclusion it also became evident that we would obtain the verdict. Every effort was made to avoid having Bennett brought in person to New York City to plead. Every species of pressure and influence was brought to bear on Stimson, and ultimately on me, to get Stimson to permit the plea to be entered in Bennett’s absence and not make him cross the water. I speak of what I know at first hand, when I say that every effort was made to obtain this favor; it was represented that if we would agree to do this the “Herald” would be most friendly with us, that the “Herald” was very influential, that we ought not to anger it, that to do so would be a very bad thing politically, etc., etc. And Stimson answered that when he came to enforce the criminal law he knew no distinction between criminals, and that, just as the poorest and most friendless wrongdoer would have to appear in person to answer to a criminal charge, so the editor of the greatest and most wealthy newspaper would have to appear in just the same fashion. And Mr. Bennett came back from France, crossed the ocean to the land of his nativity, stayed long enough to appear in court and plead guilty, and then went back to France. He paid over $30,000 in fines for what he had done; and never again has that type of personal column appeared in the “Herald.”

The significant thing in connection with the case was the action of the other New York papers. They kept the public in ignorance of what we were doing with the “New York Herald.” No attention was paid to the suit or to the judgment, beyond the two or three lines, put in some obscure part of the paper, and usually with the names suppressed. The average decent citizen was kept in ignorance of what had occurred and is to this day in ignorance why the “Herald” has ever since followed with envenomed hostility, not only the then administration, but especially Stimson.

Conduct such as I have described on the part of the “New York Herald” is conduct just as base as the conduct of the worst public servant in any municipality, in any state or in the nation can possibly be. Conduct such as that represents the effort to poison the sources of information, to poison the minds of our people, to put them in such shape that they cannot form a correct opinion upon the men who represent them in public life. No greater crime can be committed against the body politic; and particularly in this case, where the action that we took against the “Herald” was not an action for political wrong doing; it was an action against the “Herald,” against Mr. Bennett, for that species of crime that eats into our vitals, that eats into the home life, that eats like an acid into the moral fibre of our people. Yet the press and the magazines, with but one or two exceptions, paid no attention whatever to what had been done, made no attempt to discriminate against the “Herald” for the conduct of which it had been guilty; and by their silence left the public in ignorance so that it might readily fall a victim to the studied and envenomed misrepresentations and falsehoods of the “Herald” about the men who had thus brought it to justice.

You may remember that a high officer of the Sugar Trust once testified before a committee in Congress that the Trust subscribed heavily to campaign committees, and that it subscribed to the Republican Party in a Republican state and to the Democratic Party in a Democratic state. The Sugar Trust was non-partisan in its attitude. In your turn, I ask you people here, whatever your politics may be, to be non-partisan when the question of honesty is involved. A certain type of big corrupt corporation cares nothing whatever for political parties when its interests are at stake; and labor unions of the same type act in the same fashion. And I ask the people, in their turn, to pay no heed to parties when the great fundamental issues of honesty and decency, as against dishonesty and indecency are involved; only let them act in the reverse way from the action of the corporations and unions in question. When it comes to the question of a crook I will respect party feeling to just this extent: if there are two crooks, one of my party and one of another party, I will cinch the crook of my party first because I feel a shade more responsible for him.

To you men here, to all good citizens, I make the appeal to stand for honesty in public life, and to stand for the creation of an opinion which shall demand truth and decency in the press and the magazines. Do what you can, by private effort, but especially by organized effort and by pressure upon those who are your representatives, to bring about the day when the man who wilfully misleads the public, and wilfully lies to the public, on any question of interest to the public, shall be amenable--if possible to the law, if not, at least to the force of public opinion--exactly as if he were a malefactor of any other kind.

And now, my friends, in closing these five lectures I wish again to thank you from my heart for having come here and listened to me as you have listened. I appreciate it more than I can say. My plea can be summed up in these words: I ask you men and women to act in all the relations of life, in private life and in public life, in business, in politics, in every other relation, as you hope to see your sons and daughters act if you have brought them up rightly and if you prize their good name and good standing among decent men and women.

Good-bye and good luck.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been left unchanged.

Obvious typographical errors silently corrected.