REALIZABLE 
 IDEALS 
 
 (THE EARL LECTURES) 
 
 BY 
 
 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 WHITAKER & RAY-WIGGIN CO. 
 1912
 
 COPYRIGHT 
 BY 
 
 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 1911
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE addresses printed in this volume were 
 delivered under the auspices of Pacific 
 Theological Seminary by the Hon. Theodore 
 Roosevelt, as Earl Lecturer, in the Spring of 
 1911. The Seminary is fortunate in possessing 
 a Lectureship founded by Mr. Edwin T. Earl in 
 1901, whose purpose, as stated in the articles of 
 foundation, is "to aid in securing at the Univer- 
 sity of California the presentation of Christian 
 truth by bringing to Berkeley year by year emi- 
 nent Christian scholars and thinkers to speak 
 upon themes calculated to illustrate and dissem- 
 inate Christian thought and minister to Christian 
 life." The uncommon public interest which this 
 series of lectures aroused, and the attendance of 
 many thousands who daily crowded the Greek 
 Theatre to hear them, emphasized to the Lecture- 
 ship Committee the desirability of yielding to a 
 wide-spread demand for their publication. Since 
 Mr. Roosevelt did not have a manuscript, ar- 
 rangements were made for an accurate steno- 
 graphic report, which was afterwards submitted 
 to him for revision. So much should be said in 
 explanation of the forensic form of these lectures. 
 Their fine ethical purpose justifies the hope that 
 they may continue to stimulate good citizenship 
 in wider circles than those which came within 
 reach of the speaker's voice. 
 
 WILLIAM FREDERIC BADE. 
 
 September, 1911. 
 
 Pacific Theological Seminary, 
 
 Berkeley, California, 
 
 2075534
 
 REALIZABLE IDEALS 
 
 When I was first asked to deliver this 
 course of lectures I refused just because 
 what I wanted to preach was action. 
 I did not feel sure that I could preach 
 action in five lectures. I finally accept- 
 ed, because it seemed to me so admirable 
 a thing for the Seminary to have started 
 this kind of a lecture course and so ad- 
 mirable a thing for the founder of the 
 course to have provided for it that I did 
 not feel quite at liberty to refuse. 
 
 All our extraordinary material de- 
 velopment, our wonderful industrial 
 growth will go for nothing unless with 
 that growth goes hand in hand the 
 moral, the spiritual growth that will en- 
 able us to use aright the other as an 
 instrument. I hesitated some time as to 
 exactly what title to give to the lectures 
 I was to deliver because I wanted to
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 use the two titles of Applied Ethics 
 and Realizable Ideals. I chose these 
 titles because they seemed to me to put 
 into words the only spirit which I 
 think counts for anything in preaching, 
 whether by a professional or by an ama- 
 teur; the spirit which regards preaching 
 as worthless unless transmitted into 
 action. If we treat the study of ethics 
 as a mere intellectual diversion then we 
 probably do ourselves little harm and 
 certainly do ourselves no good. If we 
 consciously or carelessly preach ideals 
 which cannot be realized and which we 
 do not intend to have realized, then so 
 far from accomplishing a worthy pur- 
 pose we actually tend to weaken the 
 morality we ostensibly preach. Now, 
 anything I have to say to you during 
 these lectures will derive its whole value 
 from the spirit in me as I say it and the 
 
 2
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 spirit in you as you listen to it. If I 
 preach to you anything which I do 
 not strive, with whatever haltings and 
 shortcomings, myself to realize then I 
 am unworthy for you to listen to; and 
 if, on the other hand, you come to listen 
 to me from mere curiosity, or to get a 
 little temporary enjoyment, then you 
 would better have stayed at home. 
 
 I chose as the opening lecture this ad- 
 dress on realizable ideals, because the 
 longer I have lived the more strongly I 
 have felt the harm done by the practice 
 among so many men of keeping their 
 consciences in separate compartments; 
 sometimes a Sunday conscience and a 
 weekday conscience; sometimes a con- 
 science as to what they say or what they 
 like other people to say, and another 
 conscience as to what they do and like 
 other people to do; sometimes a con- 
 
 3
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 science for their private affairs and a 
 totally different conscience for their 
 business relations. Or again, there may 
 be one compartment in which the man 
 keeps his conscience not only for his 
 domestic affairs but for his business 
 affairs and a totally different compart- 
 ment in which he keeps his conscience 
 when he deals with public men and pub- 
 lic measures. 
 
 It has always irritated me when, in 
 whatever capacity, I have attended Sun- 
 day School celebrations, to listen to 
 some of the speeches made, and espe- 
 cially when I knew some of the men 
 making them. I have always felt most 
 strongly that it was mischievous and 
 wrong for a man to get up before a num- 
 ber of boys and girls and preach to them 
 to "take no thought of things of the 
 body," not "to regard their own inter- 
 
 4
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 ests in any way/' to think of "nothing 
 whatever but others," when they knew 
 that he did not follow any such course 
 of action himself, and when they knew 
 that they themselves could not act and 
 were not expected to act, literally on his 
 words. That kind of a speech does 
 harm, because harm is always done by 
 preaching an ideal which the preacher 
 and the hearer know cannot be followed, 
 which they know it is not intended to 
 have followed; for then the hearer con- 
 founds all ideals with the false ideal to 
 which he is listening; and because he 
 finds that he is not expected to live up 
 to the doctrine to which he has listened 
 he concludes that it is needless to live 
 up to any doctrine at all. 
 
 Now I do not mean for a moment that 
 the ideal preached should be a low one; 
 I do not mean for a moment that it is
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 ever possible entirely to realize even for 
 the very best man or woman the loftiest 
 ideal; but I do mean that the ideal 
 should not be preached except with sin- 
 cerity, and that it should be preached 
 in such a fashion as to make it possible 
 measurably to approach it. 
 
 Take the Sunday School address of 
 the type to which I object and of which 
 I have just spoken : If you tell a number 
 of boys who are about to become men 
 and go out to earn their own living if 
 you tell them to despise the things of 
 the body, to care nothing for material 
 success, you are telling them what you 
 would not want your own boys actually 
 to do; you are telling them what they 
 cannot do unless they are willing to be- 
 come public charges, and what it is not 
 desirable that they should try to do. To 
 tell them such things in the name of 
 
 6
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 morality is to invite them to despise 
 morality. What is necessary is to tell 
 them that their first duty is to earn their 
 own livelihood, to support themselves 
 and those dependent upon them; but 
 that when that first duty has been per- 
 formed there yet remains a very large 
 additional duty, in the way of service 
 to their neighbor, of service to the rest 
 of mankind. 
 
 Again, I have heard men, whose lives 
 have been passed chiefly in amassing 
 money, preach to boys that money 
 was of no real consequence, that they 
 ought to disregard it, that it was really 
 entirely unimportant. Well, those men 
 did not in practice believe what they 
 preached. Curiously enough some of 
 them had for so many years schooled 
 themselves to utter that kind of a sen- 
 tence when they got on a platform, and 
 
 7
 
 Realizable Ideals 
 
 to act in such diametrically opposite 
 fashion when they were in their business 
 offices, that they had ceased to become 
 conscious of any incongruity; when 
 they got up to speak they naturally fell 
 into the very vice that represented the 
 negation of the other vice into which 
 they equally naturally fell as soon as 
 they sat down before their counting- 
 desk. Now, it is a false statement, and 
 therefore it is a disservice to the cause 
 of morality, to tell any man that money 
 does not count. If he has not got it he 
 will find that it does count tremendous- 
 ly. If he is worth his salt and is desir- 
 ous of caring for mother and sisters, 
 wife and children, he will not only find 
 that it counts but he will realize that he 
 has acted with infamy and with baseness 
 if he has not appreciated the fact that 
 it does count. And of course, when I 
 8
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 speak of money I mean what money 
 stands for. It counts tremendously. 
 No man has any right to the respect of 
 his fellows if through any fault of his 
 own he has failed to keep those depend- 
 ent upon him in reasonable comfort. It 
 is his duty not to despise money. It is 
 his duty to regard money, up to the 
 point where his wife and children and 
 any other people dependent upon him 
 have food, clothing, shelter, decent sur- 
 roundings, the chance for the children to 
 get a decent education, the chance for 
 the children to train themselves to do 
 their life work aright, a chance for 
 wife and children to get reasonable re- 
 laxation. Now practically, as regards 
 his or her own family, I doubt if there is 
 anyone here who would deny that prop- 
 osition. It is so obvious that it seems 
 needless to put it before you; and yet 
 9
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 how often do we listen to a man on a 
 platform like this, saying, because it is 
 the conventional thing to say, "pay no 
 heed to money." Now, of course, when 
 such a preacher says "pay no heed to 
 money" his hearers at once accept what 
 he is about to say further as insincere; 
 and, whether they pay heed to money 
 or not, they pay no further heed to what 
 he says about it. 
 
 It is not a realizable ideal, to "pay no 
 heed to money." You must pay heed 
 up to the point I have indicated. But 
 it is a realizable ideal, after you have 
 once reached that point, to understand 
 that money is merely a means to an end, 
 and that if you make it the end instead 
 of a means you do little good to your- 
 self and are a curse to everybody else. 
 It is a realizable ideal, to make people 
 understand that while it is their first 
 10
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 duty to pull their own weight in the 
 world, yet that after they have achieved 
 a certain amount of prosperity both 
 their capacity for usefulness toward 
 others and their capacity for enjoyment 
 depends infinitely more on other things 
 than upon possessing additional money. 
 Now, the very fact that I grant in the 
 fullest degree the need of having enough 
 money, which means the need of suffi- 
 cient material achievement to enable 
 you and those dependent upon you to 
 lead your lives healthily and under de- 
 cent conditions the very fact that I 
 grant this as the essential first need to 
 meet, entitles me to have you accept 
 what I say at its face value when I add 
 that this represents only the beginning, 
 and that after you have reached this 
 point your worth as a unit in the com- 
 monwealth, your worth to others and 
 
 11
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 your worth to yourself, depends infin- 
 itely less upon having additional money 
 than it depends upon your possessing 
 certain other things, things of the soul 
 and the spirit. 
 
 I could not overstate the grinding 
 misery, the heart-breaking misery, I 
 have seen come to a family where the 
 man is unable quite to do what he ought 
 to for those dependent upon him. But 
 after the man and the woman have 
 reached the point where they have a 
 home in which the elemental needs are 
 met and where in addition they have 
 accumulated a comparatively small 
 amount of money necessary to meet the 
 primal needs of the spirit and of the 
 intellect after this point is reached it 
 is my deliberate judgment that money, 
 instead of being the prime factor, is one 
 of the minor factors, both in usefulness 
 
 12
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 and in happiness. Always keep in mind 
 my first proviso I am not going to re- 
 peat it to you as to the necessity of 
 having enough money. But go beyond 
 that ; for beyond that, the difference be- 
 tween the multi-millionaire and the man 
 of very moderate fortune is in the vast 
 majority of cases really a difference of 
 appearance and not of reality as regards 
 both usefulness and happiness. The 
 chief harm that the multi-millionaire 
 does in my mind comes not in his join- 
 ing with others to make a trust al- 
 though when he does that I will try to 
 regulate him and it is not in the fact 
 that in him as in other men there is, as 
 Abraham Lincoln put it, "a deal of 
 human nature," so that he is sometimes 
 very good and sometimes not good at 
 all; it is that he is apt to give to the rest 
 of us a thoroughly false ideal. The 
 13
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 worst ill that can befall us is to have 
 our own souls corrupted, and it is a de- 
 basing thing for a nation to choose as 
 its heroes the men of mere wealth. 
 
 I remember a number of years ago 
 seeing a pleasant and very happy little 
 community very nearly ruined and as 
 regards many of the families completely 
 ruined because an entirely amiable 
 multi-millionaire moved into the neigh- 
 borhood. I really think that his amia- 
 bility and his perfectly sincere desire to 
 be pleasant with everyone was one of 
 the causes of the mischief. I know, for 
 instance, a very nice woman there, with 
 a charming little house, who, having 
 been asked to dinner at the very gor- 
 geous mansion of this worthy soul of 
 many millions, naturally wished to en- 
 tertain him and his wife in return. But, 
 alas, she was perfectly wretched when it 
 14
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 actually came to entertaining them in 
 her house; she was not willing to have 
 the hired girl wait on the table; she 
 had to have a butler, and then she had 
 to live up to the butler. And the fun- 
 ny thing was instead of giving the 
 multi-millionaire a perfectly pleasant 
 time in her own fashion, which she 
 could have done, she merely gave him a 
 dreary tenth-rate imitation of his own 
 feasts. Instead of putting herself in a 
 totally different class, so that there 
 could be no competition between them 
 at all, she insisted on competing in a 
 class where she was certain to get the 
 worst of it. After two or three years of 
 the millionaire's residence in the neigh- 
 borhood there were not a few families 
 who had suffered either some perma- 
 nent damage or grave temporary dis- 
 comfort, not from any fault of the mil- 
 15
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 lionaire, but because they themselves 
 had been foolish. Now, I don't want to 
 preach against the millionaire; but I do 
 want to preach against us if we let him 
 make us spoil ourselves that's all. 
 
 I wish us to understand better than 
 we now do what are the real things and 
 what are the artificial things of life. I 
 wish us to get a better perspective. 
 Take even the average educational in- 
 stitution; if a very wealthy man visits 
 it altogether too many of the boys look 
 at him with eager interest, as a man that 
 has had just the career that they intend 
 to emulate; and altogether too many of 
 the girls think that they would like to 
 marry into his class ! Now, in that case, 
 I don't blame him at all; I think it mere- 
 ly adds to our sin, to our iniquity, if we 
 blame him instead of ourselves for the 
 feelings, not that he has about us, but 
 
 16
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 that we have about him. But I do blame 
 ourselves; I blame us if we do not have 
 a proper sense of perspective, if we fail 
 to pay honor to the people who are enti- 
 tled to it. I do not wonder that a great 
 many men make of money-getting their 
 one ideal when so many of their fellow 
 countrymen treat success in making 
 money as the chief kind of success. 
 
 When America's history is written, 
 when the history of the last century in 
 America is written a hundred years 
 hence, the name of no multi-millionaire, 
 who is nothing but a multi-millionaire, 
 will appear in that history, unless it 
 appears in some foot-note to illustrate 
 some queer vagary or extravagance. 
 The men who will loom large in our 
 history are the men of real achievement 
 of the kind that counts. You can go 
 over them statesmen, soldiers, wise 
 
 17
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 philanthropists I wish to underscore 
 the word "wise," for the philanthropist 
 who is really worth calling such is the 
 man who tries to make such use of his 
 philanthropy as to provide against the 
 need of philanthropy in the future, just 
 as the real worker in charity is the 
 worker who does his best to bring about 
 conditions in which charity shall not be 
 necessary. The statesman, the writer, 
 the man of science, of letters, of art, 
 these are the men who will leave their 
 mark on history. 
 
 When you look back and think of the 
 Civil War, what lives of those who then 
 lived would you, if you had a chance, 
 like yourselves to have lived? Not the 
 lives of the sordid souls who stayed at 
 home and made money out of the Civil 
 War; not even the lives of those men 
 who were not sordid, who acted honora- 
 18
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 bly in their private business at home, 
 but who did not have the opportunity 
 and privilege of going to the front. The 
 lives that you respect, the lives that you 
 wish your fathers or forefathers to have 
 led, are those of the men who in the 
 time of the Nation's trial each endeav- 
 ored to render all the service that could 
 possibly be rendered to the nation. 
 Those are the men of the past to whose 
 memory we look up, of whose fame we 
 as Americans are jealous, whose good 
 deeds we would like to emulate. Now, 
 that is our attitude toward the past; I 
 ask that we make it also our attitude in 
 the present. 
 
 I wish it distinctly to be understood 
 that I have not the smallest prejudice 
 against multi-millionaires. I like them. 
 But I always feel this way when I meet 
 one of them : You have made millions 
 
 19
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 good; that shows you must have some- 
 thing in you, I wish you would show it. 
 
 I do regard it as a realizable ideal for 
 our people as a whole to demand, not of 
 the millionaire not at all but of their 
 own children and of themselves, that 
 they shall get the millionaire in his 
 proper perspective, and when they once 
 do that ninety-five per cent of what is 
 undesirable in the power of the million- 
 aire will disappear. I shall speak of the 
 other five per cent in a minute or two; 
 but I am speaking now of much the 
 larger part of what makes him undesir- 
 able; and much of that larger part is 
 not in him at all, it is in us; it is in the 
 emotions we permit the sight of him to 
 produce in us. 
 
 Now, a word to my fellow reformers. 
 If they permit themselves to adopt an 
 attitude of hate and envy toward the 
 20
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 millionaire they are just about as badly 
 off as if they adopt an attitude of mean 
 subservience to him. It is just as much 
 a confession of inferiority to feel mean 
 hatred and defiance of a man as it is to 
 feel a mean desire to please him over- 
 much. In each case it means that the 
 man having the emotion is not confident 
 in himself, that he lacks self-confidence, 
 self-reliance, that he does not stand on 
 his own feet; and, therefore, in each case 
 it is an admission that the man is not as 
 good as the man whom he hates and 
 envies, or before whom he truckles. 
 
 So that I shall preach as an ideal 
 neither to truckle to nor to hate the man 
 of mere wealth, because if you do either 
 you admit your inferiority in reference 
 to him; and if you admit that you are 
 inferior as compared to him you are no 
 good American, you have no place in 
 21
 
 Realizable Ideals 
 
 this Republic. So that from our stand- 
 point toward the millionaire ninety-five 
 per cent of the damage he can do us is 
 subjective and not objective; that is to 
 say, it rests with us and not with him. 
 There remains the five per cent of 
 harm that he can do us for which we are 
 not responsible. Up to this point I have 
 been preaching to us about him. Now 
 I want to say a word or two to him, to 
 the man of great wealth. The mere ac- 
 quisition of wealth in and by itself, be- 
 yond a certain point, speaks very little 
 indeed for the man compared with suc- 
 cess in most other lines of endeavor. I 
 want you to weigh the words that I have 
 used the mere acquisition of wealth in 
 itself. I know that there are many men 
 who have made great fortunes where 
 the making of the great fortune has 
 been an incident to the doing of a great 
 22
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 task, where the man has really been at 
 least as much interested in the task as 
 in the fortune. It is a great epic feat to 
 drive a railroad across a continent; it is 
 a great epic feat to build up a business 
 worth building. For the man who per- 
 forms that feat I have a genuine regard. 
 For the man who makes a great fortune 
 as an incident to rendering a great serv- 
 ice I have nothing but admiration al- 
 though unfortunately the men who are 
 entitled to our regard, and a little more 
 to our admiration for the feats that 
 they have thus done, have too often for- 
 feited all right to that regard and ad- 
 miration and more than forfeited it by 
 the course that they have afterwards, or 
 coincidently, pursued in regard to mon- 
 ey making or in other matters; Further- 
 more the wealthy men who make money 
 which does not represent service are 
 23
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 public enemies; we are bound to make 
 war against every form of special privi- 
 lege. 
 
 We have now definitely accepted as 
 axiomatic the fact that in this country 
 we have to control the use of enormous 
 aggregations of wealth in business. But 
 no great industrial chief should be con- 
 tent to do only so much as is necessary 
 to keep within the law. He may be "law 
 honest," and yet be a sinister enemy of 
 the commonwealth. 
 
 One great realizable ideal for our peo- 
 ple is to discourage mere law honesty. 
 It is necessary to have good laws and to 
 have them well enforced. But the best 
 laws and the most rigid enforcement 
 will not by themselves produce a really 
 healthy type of morals in the commun- 
 ity. In addition to the law and its en- 
 forcement we must have the public 
 24
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 opinion which frowns on the man who 
 violates the spirit of the law even al- 
 though he keeps just within the letter. 
 I cannot tell you any one way in which 
 that feeling can be made to carry 
 weight. I think it -must find expression 
 in a dozen different ways. Later in one 
 of these lectures I shall discuss the or- 
 gans of public opinion and public ex- 
 pression the press and the magazines. 
 When they more measurably reach the 
 ideal they ought to, we shall be able to 
 grapple more effectually with the man 
 of wealth who fails in his duty than 
 we do at present. But without waiting 
 for that day, we should strive to create 
 in the community the sense of propor- 
 tion which will make us respect the de- 
 cent man who does well, and condemn 
 the man who does not act decently and 
 who does wrong. 
 
 25
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 The other day a sentence was uttered 
 in the Senate by a certain Senator which 
 I thought was fraught quite uncon- 
 sciously fraught with a lesson for all 
 of us. The Senator in question had 
 been engaged in an impassioned speech 
 on behalf of Mr. Lorimer, and in speak- 
 ing of some of the unsavory creatures 
 who had testified in the case he said in 
 answer to a question, "Yes, they were 
 fools as well as knaves," and that in his 
 experience all knaves were fools. 
 
 That is not so. This Senator was giv- 
 ing expression to a very unhealthy atti- 
 tude of the public mind, the tendency to 
 treat as a knave only the foolish knave, 
 and to pardon the wise knave who man- 
 aged to succeed in his villainy. We 
 shall never come near realizing the very 
 realizable ideal of honesty in business 
 and public life until we make it evident 
 26
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 that the scoundrel whom we hate most 
 is not the scoundrel who fails but the 
 scoundrel who succeeds. The scoun- 
 drel who fails is condemned by every- 
 one and is laughed at by his fellow- 
 knaves. It is the scoundrel who wins 
 out that is the menace to this Republic, 
 the menace to this great commonwealth 
 of ours. Let us so shape our laws as to 
 make it difficult for the scoundrel to 
 succeed, and to give us at least a rea- 
 sonable chance of punishing him after 
 he succeeds. In addition to this, let us 
 also, each of us individually and all of 
 us collectively, strive to create the kind 
 of public opinion which will make the 
 success of such a scoundrel hardly worth 
 having. The dullest man, the man with 
 the thickest skin, does not enjoy very 
 much a success which brings on him the 
 scorn of his fellows. The old Greek 
 
 27
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 proverb was that "contempt would 
 pierce the shell of a tortoise," and what- 
 ever our people really scorn, really de- 
 spise, really condemn, is something that 
 the knaves among us rarely care to 
 have. When we can create the public 
 opinion which will mean that the aver- 
 age honest man turns away from the 
 successful knave one of the prime in- 
 centives for being a successful knave 
 will have vanished. 
 
 To that end, friends, I again wish to 
 say that we must hold up an ideal that 
 can be realized. If we use language 
 which would go to show that we regard 
 success and failure in the business world 
 as of indifference, then we shall merely 
 convince every man in that world that 
 we are speaking insincerely. You do 
 not regard success and failure with in- 
 difference. You do not regard the man 
 
 28
 
 Realizable Ideals 
 
 who fails and the man who succeeds as 
 standing on the same plane; and as long 
 as you do not so regard it, tell the truth 
 about it. No man ever permanently 
 helped a reform by lying on behalf of 
 the reform. Tell the truth about it; and 
 then you can expect to be believed when 
 you tell further truths; the truth that 
 business success, though an admirable 
 thing, up to a certain point an absolutely 
 necessary thing, is beyond that point 
 not as admirable as some other things; 
 and the truth that business success ob- 
 tained, not by serving your fellows but 
 by swindling your fellows, is an infamy 
 and is to be so regarded by all honest 
 men. 
 
 Realizable ideals; we must have them 
 in private and in public life both. I have 
 already told you of one type of sermon 
 to which I strongly object. There is 
 
 29
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 another type to which I object almost 
 as strongly, and that is the sermon 
 which in its condemnation of innocent 
 pleasure tends to make men confound 
 vice and pleasure. I heartily abhor the 
 man who practices vice because he re- 
 gards it as the only kind of enjoyment. 
 I do not abhor quite as much, but I at 
 least as much despise, the clergyman 
 who makes ready the path for such a 
 man by condemning indiscriminately 
 innocent enjoyment and vice. It is not 
 only harmless, but it is eminently de- 
 sirable, that young people should have 
 a good time. 
 
 What we wish for ourselves, and have 
 a right to wish for ourselves I want to 
 see us preach towards others. If you 
 persuade the average boy that it is wick- 
 ed to have a good time, it may have 
 either one of two results : if he is a very 
 
 30
 
 Realisable Ideals 
 
 sensitive boy it may prevent him from 
 ever having a good time, in which case 
 I will guarantee that he makes all those 
 intimately associated with him have a 
 very bad time; or else, you may per- 
 suade him that inasmuch as he thor- 
 oughly intends to have a good time, and 
 as a good time is wicked why, in for 
 a lamb, in for a sheep, and he will be 
 wicked to some purpose. I ask here 
 again that not only every clergyman 
 but every teacher of morals and that 
 ought to include every father who is 
 worth being called father endeavor to 
 help the boy in getting a good time; and 
 then hold him to a rigid accountability 
 if he turns that good time into a bad 
 time. 
 
 This illustrates just what I mean by 
 a realizable ideal. Don't preach the im- 
 possible. Don't preach what makes 
 
 31
 
 Realizable Ideals 
 
 your hearers think you are insincere. 
 But have ideals and insist on their real- 
 ization. If this nation has not the right 
 kind of ideal in every walk of life, if we 
 have not in our souls the capacity for 
 idealism, the power to strive after ideals, 
 then we are gone. No nation ever 
 amounted to anything if it did not have 
 within its soul the power of fealty to a 
 lofty ideal. For that very reason it is 
 our duty to avoid preaching false ideals, 
 and with almost equal scrupulousness 
 to avoid preaching, as desirable, ideals 
 which cannot be measurably attained. 
 
 I am to deliver three more lectures, 
 and I wish in these lectures to speak of 
 applied ethics, of realizable ideals; in 
 the first place in the family, because that 
 is the foundation of everything; in the 
 next place in public life which means 
 in the collective life of all of us, in the 
 
 32
 
 Realizable Ideals 
 
 life lived on behalf of all of us; and fin- 
 ally as regards the expression of public 
 opinion, as regards the instruments that 
 should do most to shape public opinion 
 the press, the magazines. In each of 
 those three lectures I shall endeavor to 
 show you why I believe we should 
 change certain of the ideals we now 
 have, and why I believe we should in 
 every way, and, above all, by the force 
 of public opinion, insist that the realiza- 
 ble ideal be actually realized in practice. 
 
 33
 
 THE HOME AND THE CHILD 
 
 If this were the first of these lectures 
 I would feel like apologizing for having 
 brought you here under false pretenses; 
 but you came here with your eyes open 
 now and I haven't any sympathy for 
 you! 
 
 I spoke yesterday of applied ethics, 
 of realizable ideals. Before I begin my 
 regular theme of today I want to say a 
 word as to my utterances yesterday. I 
 intend to try to avoid the position in 
 which a former fellow-townsman of 
 mine, a Mr. Richard Grant White, who 
 was a great Shakespearian scholar got 
 himself. It was once announced that he 
 was to deliver twelve lectures on Shakes- 
 peare; in his first lecture he outlined 
 what he intended to say in the other 
 eleven; and then he spent the other elev- 
 en in answering the attacks on the first. 
 
 34
 
 The H o me and the Child 
 
 I intend to try to avoid getting into a 
 similar predicament, but I must make 
 one explanation. 
 
 Two or three remarks that were made 
 to me after the close of the lecture yes- 
 terday suggested to me that I ought 
 perhaps to have laid emphasis on a point 
 which seemed to me so obvious that I 
 did not emphasize it. Two or three gen- 
 tlemen spoke to me in a way that indi- 
 cated that they thought that in advo- 
 cating realizable ideals I had somehow 
 seemed to advocate low ideals. I do 
 not believe that to most of you I con- 
 veyed any such impression, but if I did I 
 of course wish to correct it. I should be 
 ashamed of myself unless I believed in 
 high ideals. I do not think that an ideal 
 is really a high ideal unless it is one that 
 is at least partially realizable. My 
 preaching is not against high ideals but 
 
 35
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 against wrong ideals. I remember in a 
 little story by Miss Mary E. Wilkins 
 when she makes one of her characters 
 say anent the leading village worthy 
 who claimed to be much better than 
 anyone else, "I think there are some peo- 
 ple who aren't so far ahead of us as they 
 are to one side of us; sometimes it is 
 latitude and sometimes it is longitude 
 that separates reformers." I would be 
 sorry indeed to have any word of mine 
 understood as implying any willingness 
 to lower our ideals. All I want is to 
 have the people that preach them sure 
 that they are really high ideals. No 
 ideal can be right for this world if it is 
 not fitted to be used in this world. It 
 cannot be right to preach to men and 
 women a standard of conduct up to 
 which you do not expect them to live. 
 My plea is only that those who preach 
 
 36
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 shall strive to preach a doctrine up to 
 which it is possible to live, and that 
 those who listen shall not listen merely 
 to gratify their esthetic sensibilities, but 
 shall listen with the serious purpose of 
 applying and of acting upon the princi- 
 ples laid down to them. Perhaps in 
 what I had to say yesterday I ought to 
 have guarded myself against the possi- 
 bility of anyone's misconstruing my lan- 
 guage. I hope I have so guarded my- 
 self in what I have said today. 
 
 The first place where I desire to see 
 any man or woman realize his or her 
 ideals is in connection with those most 
 intimately thrown with him or her. The 
 very first place in which it is necessary 
 that ideals should be realized is in the 
 man's own home. It is so elementary 
 that it seems hardly necessary to say 
 that everything else in our civilization 
 
 37
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 rests upon the home; that all public 
 achievement rests upon private charac- 
 ter; that the state cannot go on onward 
 and upward, that the nation cannot 
 make progress, unless the average indi- 
 vidual is of the right type, unless the 
 average American is a pretty decent 
 fellow and unless his wife is a still better 
 fellow. It will not be possible otherwise 
 for the nation permanently to rise. 
 
 The first essential toward the achieve- 
 ment of good citizenship is, of course, 
 the building up the kind of character 
 which will make the man a good hus- 
 band, a good father, a good son; which 
 will make the woman a good daughter 
 when she is young, a good wife and 
 mother as she grows older. Absolutely 
 nothing is gained by filling a man with 
 vague aspirations for the betterment of 
 his kind if you have not filled him first 
 
 38
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 of all with the desire to do decently by 
 those members of mankind with whom 
 he passes most of his life. 
 
 We all of us know the type of man, 
 frequently found at cross-road groceries, 
 who in his abundant leisure is able to 
 explain precisely how humanity should 
 be benefited and the nation run, mean- 
 while he himself exists at all only be- 
 cause his wife takes in washing. We 
 also know the man who in public life is 
 filled with the loftiest aspirations; but 
 whose family unite in breathing a sigh 
 of relief whenever he is absent from the 
 house. 
 
 Of course there is now and then a man 
 who in some given crisis plays the hero 
 although on other occasions he plays the 
 brute there are such cases; but it is a 
 mighty unsafe thing to proceed upon 
 the assumption that because a man is 
 
 39
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 ordinarily a brute he will therefore be 
 a hero in a crisis. Disregarding the ex- 
 ceptions, and speaking normally, no 
 man can be of any service to the state, 
 no man can amount to anything from 
 the standpoint of usefulness to the com- 
 munity at large, unless first and fore- 
 most he is a decent man in the close rela- 
 tions of life. No community can afford 
 to think for one moment that great pub- 
 lic service, that great material achieve- 
 ment, that ability shown in no matter 
 how many different directions, will 
 atone for the lack of a sound family life. 
 Multiplication of divorces means that 
 there is something rotten in the com- 
 munity, that there is some principle of 
 evil at work which must be counteracted 
 and overcome or widespread disaster 
 will follow. In the same way, if the man 
 preaches and practices a different code 
 
 40
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 of morality for himself than that which 
 he demands that his wife shall practice, 
 then no profession on his part of devo- 
 tion to civic ideals will in the least avail 
 to alter the fact that he is fundamentally 
 a bad citizen. I do not believe in weak- 
 ness; I believe in a man's being a man; 
 and for that very reason I abhor the 
 creature who uses the expression that "a 
 man must be a man" in order to excuse 
 his being a vile and vicious man. 
 
 I recollect saying to a young friend 
 who was about to enter college, "My 
 friend, I know that you feel that you 
 ought to be a good man; now, be willing 
 to fight for your principles whenever it 
 is necessary; if you're willing enough to 
 fight nobody will complain about your 
 being too virtuous." 
 
 If you accept only the weak man who 
 cannot hold his own as the type of vir- 
 
 41
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 tuous man, you will inevitably create an 
 atmosphere among ordinary, vigorous 
 young men in which they will translate 
 their contempt of weakness into con- 
 tempt of virtue. My plea is that the 
 virtuous man, the decent man, shall be 
 a strong man, able to hold his own in 
 any way, just because I wish him to be 
 an agent in eradicating the misconcep- 
 tion that being decent somehow means 
 being weak; I want this to apply to every 
 form of decency, public as well as pri- 
 vate. 
 
 The worst development that we could 
 see in civic life in this country would 
 be a division of citizens into two camps, 
 one camp containing nice, well-behaved, 
 well-meaning little men, with receding 
 chins and small feet, men who mean well 
 and who if they are insulted feel shocked 
 and want to go home; and the other 
 
 42
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 camp containing robust and efficient 
 creatures who do not mean well at all. 
 I wish to see our side the side of de- 
 cency include men who have not the 
 slightest fear of the people on the other 
 side. I wish to see the decent man in 
 any relation of life, including politics, 
 when hustled by the man who is not 
 decent, able so to hold his own that the 
 other gentleman shall feel no desire to 
 hustle him again. My plea is for the 
 virtue that shall be strong and that shall 
 also have a good time. You recollect 
 that Wesley said he wasn't going to 
 leave all the good times to the Devil. In 
 the same way we must not leave 
 strength and efficiency to the Devil's 
 agents. The decent man must realize 
 that it is his duty to be strong just as 
 much as to be decent. There are a good 
 many types of men for whom I do not 
 
 43
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 care; and among those types I would 
 put in prominent place the timid good 
 man the good man who means well 
 but is afraid. I wish to see it inculcated 
 from the pulpit by every ethical teacher, 
 and in the home, that just to be decent 
 is not enough; that in addition to being 
 a decent man it is the duty of the man 
 to be a strong man. And also this ; to let 
 the fact that he is a decent man dawn 
 on his neighbors by itself, and without 
 his announcing it or emphasizing it. 
 
 With both men and women the prime 
 necessity to remember is that the simple 
 duties are the most important. I be- 
 lieve that they also mark the way by 
 which, and by which alone, it is possible 
 to realize the truest and highest happi- 
 ness. I have known a good many miser- 
 able people in my life, and infinitely the 
 most miserable among them have been 
 
 44
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 those who have deliberately and with 
 set purpose devoted their lives to the 
 pursuit of what they call pleasure. A 
 young girl, a young man, can be happy 
 for a few years and to a certain degree, 
 in following a life from which every ves- 
 tige of serious effort and of attempt to 
 fulfill duty has been removed; but they 
 can thus be happy only at the cost of 
 laying up for themselves an infinite 
 store of misery in the future. In this 
 audience there are many who fought in 
 the great Civil War. The memories 
 that those men prize are not the mem- 
 ories of the days of ease, of the days 
 when life was pleasant for them; the 
 memories that they prize, and that they 
 wish to hand down as heritages of honor 
 to their children, are the memories of 
 the days of toil and effort, of the days 
 of the march and the battle, the weary 
 
 45
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 months in camp, the time when in the 
 full flush of their vigorous young man- 
 hood they gladly risked everything 
 life itself for the great prize of death 
 in battle for the right. 
 
 It is not given to every generation 
 fortunately it is given to only an occa- 
 sional generation to spend itself for so 
 great a goal; but we can all render, not 
 as distinguished, but as essential, a serv- 
 ice in ordinary life, if only we will face 
 the ordinary humdrum every-day duties 
 in the spirit in which the soldiers of the 
 Civil War faced their great and excep- 
 tional task. But this we can only do if 
 we put duty before pleasure, and make 
 of it our highest happiness. 
 
 As I said to you yesterday, I do not 
 intend to preach anything that I do not 
 think can be practiced. I call your at- 
 tention to the fact that I have not said 
 
 46
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 that you shall put duty in the place of 
 pleasure; I have merely asked you to 
 put it before pleasure. Pleasure has its 
 place. I wish you to have a good time, 
 I wish you to enjoy yourselves. But I 
 wish you to remember that merely hav- 
 ing a good time will turn to bitter dust in 
 your mouth, to Dead Sea fruit in your 
 mouth, if you devote your whole atten- 
 tion only to the pursuit of pleasure, and 
 especially to the pursuit of vapid pleas- 
 ure. Pleasure interspersed as an occa- 
 sional needed relief in doing your life 
 work as duty demands that you do it 
 such pleasure is worth having. But 
 pleasure pursued as a serious business 
 represents about as melancholy an occu- 
 pation as any that I know of anywhere. 
 Of course, if you have the pure Bridge 
 Club type of mind I can't expect to 
 appeal to you. If unlimited Bridge, 
 
 47
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 continued through that section of eter- 
 nity that you enjoy on this earth, 
 represents your ideal, then nothing 
 that I can say will in any way shake 
 or alter it which will be, not my 
 fault, but yours. If, however, you have 
 in you the desire for higher things, then 
 I believe that it is possible to make you 
 realize that in the long run your greatest 
 enjoyment will come from the perform- 
 ance of duty. It is very important that 
 we should consider our rights; but it is 
 all-important that we should consider 
 our duties. 
 
 A little while ago I was handed a let- 
 ter from the Equal Suffrage Association 
 asking me to speak on behalf of Woman 
 Suffrage. I have always told my friends 
 that it seemed to me that no man was 
 worth his salt who did not think very 
 deeply of woman's rights; and that no 
 
 48
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 woman was worth her salt who did not 
 think more of her duties than of her 
 rights. Now, personally I am rather 
 tepidly in favor of woman's suffrage. 
 When the opportunity came I have al- 
 ways supported it. But I have studied 
 the condition of women in those states 
 where they have the suffrage and in the 
 adjacent states where they do not have 
 it; and, after such study I have never 
 been able to take as great interest in the 
 question as in many other questions be- 
 cause it has always seemed to me so 
 infinitely less important than so many 
 other questions affecting women. I do 
 not think that the harm that its oppo- 
 nents fear will come from it, but I do 
 not think that more than a fraction of 
 the good that its advocates anticipate 
 will come from it. In consequence, while 
 I favor it yet, as I said, I favor it tepidly, 
 
 49
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 because I am infinitely more interested 
 in other things. I do not believe that 
 the question of woman's voting is a 
 thousandth or a millionth part as im- 
 portant as the question of keeping, and 
 where necessary reviving, among the 
 women of this country, the realization 
 that their great work must be done in 
 the home, that the ideal woman of the 
 future, just like the ideal woman of the 
 past, must be the good wife, the good 
 mother, the mother who is able to bear, 
 and to rear, a number of healthy chil- 
 dren. Now, I notice that a good many 
 men applauded that statement. I wish 
 to say to those men in their turn that 
 there is no human being with whom I 
 have less sympathy than the man who is 
 always loudly in favor of woman doing 
 her duty while he falls short in the per- 
 formance of his own. He in his turn is 
 
 SO
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 not fit to exercise the suffrage if he is 
 not a good man in his own home. If he 
 does not make it the first duty of his life 
 to be an efficient home-maker, a good 
 and loving husband, a wise and loving 
 father, he is a mighty poor citizen. And 
 let him be exceedingly careful that he 
 occupies the proper relation towards his 
 family, and does his duty to the state; 
 before he tries to talk to the woman 
 about keeping her proper position. Let 
 him do his duty first before troubling 
 himself as to how she does hers. 
 
 I wish to speak especially about the 
 relation of the home and the child. 
 There is a natural and I cannot help 
 thinking a regrettable tendency to 
 treat with a certain levity what ought 
 to be the great fundamental truth under- 
 lying every system of morals taught in 
 this country. I do not wish to see this 
 
 51
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 country a country of selfish prosperity, 
 where those who enjoy the material 
 prosperity think only of the selfish grat- 
 ification of their own desires, and are 
 content to import from abroad not only 
 their art, not only their literature, but 
 even their babies. Look at the census 
 returns published in 1910, and you will 
 see that this country is beginning to 
 travel the path that France has long 
 been traveling. Two-thirds of our in- 
 crease now comes from the immigrants 
 and not from the babies born here, not 
 from young Americans who are to per- 
 petuate the blood and traditions of the 
 old stock. It surely ought to be so ob- 
 vious as to be unnecessary to point out 
 that all thought of the next generation, 
 all thought of its vocational, artistic or 
 ethical training is wasted thought if 
 there is not to be a next generation to 
 
 52
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 train. The first duty of any nation that 
 is worth considering at all is to perpetu- 
 ate its own life, its own blood. That 
 duty will not be performed unless we 
 have not merely a high but a sober ideal 
 of duty and devotion in family life, un- 
 less our men and women realize what 
 true happiness is, realize and act on the 
 belief that no other form of pleasure, no 
 other form of enjoyment, in any way 
 takes the place of that highest of all 
 pleasures which comes only in the home, 
 which comes from the love of the one 
 man and the one woman for each other, 
 and for their children. Nothing else 
 takes the place or can take the place of 
 family life, and family life cannot be 
 really happy unless it is based on duty, 
 based on recognition of the great under- 
 lying laws of religion and morality, 
 of the great underlying laws of civili- 
 
 53
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 zation, the laws which if broken mean 
 the dissolution of civilization. Unless 
 the average man and woman are mar- 
 ried and have healthy children then my 
 coming before this audience is a waste 
 of time and it is a waste of time 
 for you in your turn to come here 
 and listen to me. If you do not 
 believe in your own stock enough to 
 wish to see the stock kept up then you 
 are not good Americans, you are not 
 patriots ; and if you do not believe in this, 
 then I for one shall not mourn your ex- 
 tinction, and in such event I shall wel- 
 come the advent of a new race that will 
 take your place, because you will have 
 shown that you are not fit to cumber the 
 ground. 
 
 This is the most essential and the least 
 pleasant truth that I have to tell you. I 
 I can't expect you to applaud it. But I 
 
 54
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 want you to think over it; and I don't 
 care a rap what you think of me for tell- 
 it to you, if only you will think seriously 
 of the truth itself. In the long run no 
 man or woman can really be happy un- 
 less he or she is doing service. Happi- 
 ness springing exclusively from some 
 other cause crumbles in your hands, 
 amounts to nothing; and in no other 
 way can service as good be rendered as 
 by the right type of mother and father 
 and I have put them in their order of 
 precedence, the mother first, the father 
 next. 
 
 Speaking here in a great educational 
 institution I wish to extend my pro- 
 found sympathy to the teachers and in- 
 structors who are continually brought 
 into contact with what I may call the 
 cuckoo style of parent the parent who 
 believes that when he can once turn his 
 
 55
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 child into school he shifts all responsi- 
 bility from his own shoulders for the 
 child's education, the parent who be- 
 lieves that he can buy for a certain sum 
 which he usually denounces as excess- 
 ive a deputy parent to do his work for 
 him. There is no profession in this 
 country quite as important as the profes- 
 sion of teacher, ranging from the College 
 President right down to the lowest paid 
 teacher in any one of our smallest coun- 
 try public schools. There is no other 
 profession so important. But not the 
 best teacher can wholly supply the want 
 of what ought to be done in the home by 
 the father and the mother. And you 
 men here, I wish you to remember that 
 I put the father in with the mother. I 
 know perfectly well that he cannot fulfill 
 quite as useful a function in the home; 
 but he has his place! He has no right 
 
 56
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 to try to shift the burden wholly upon 
 the woman's shoulders and then wonder 
 why the children are not better brought 
 up. We continually speak and it is 
 perfectly proper that we should of the 
 enormous importance of the woman's 
 work in the home. It is more important 
 than the man's. She does play a greater 
 part. But the man is not to be excused 
 if he fails to recognize that his work in 
 the home, in helping bring up, as well as 
 provide for, the children, is also one of 
 his primary functions. 
 
 Just because she is more important in 
 the home than the father I wish to speak 
 especially to the women on one point in 
 connection with bringing up children. 
 One of the things that makes one sad in 
 certain families is to see the harm done 
 by the loving parent who is foolish. I 
 trust that I need not say that I abhor 
 
 57
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 and condemn the father and the mother 
 who do not give ample and manifest love 
 to the children. It is a dreadful thing 
 to have a child brought up in a loveless 
 home; it is a dreadful thing to have the 
 children who are brought into the world 
 deprived of the love and the devotion 
 which is their due. But great though 
 the harm is that is done by the hard, 
 narrow, unsympathetic parent, it is 
 hardly greater than the harm done by 
 the well-meaning parent and I regret 
 to say more often by the woman than 
 the man the well-meaning parent who 
 permits tenderness of heart to extend 
 until it becomes softness of head. Too 
 often, among hard-working friends of 
 mine I have known a woman say, "I've 
 had to work hard all my life and my 
 daughter shall be brought up as a lady" ; 
 meaning poor soul that the daughter 
 
 58
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 shall be brought up to be utterly worth- 
 less to herself and to everyone else. I 
 have often seen a good woman at least 
 a woman who was good in purpose 
 allow her children to become utterly sel- 
 fish, and really elaborately trained for 
 avoiding the performance of duty, under 
 the mistaken impression that she was 
 being kind and loving to them. The 
 worst wrong that can be committed by 
 you mothers and fathers to your chil- 
 dren is to train them in such fashion 
 that they have no recognition of duty to 
 themselves or to others. Your children 
 had better have been taken away from 
 you and adopted somewhere else than 
 brought up by you if you are guilty of 
 the culpable weakness of gratifying your 
 own feeling of weak, ease-loving affec- 
 tion by failing to make them behave 
 from the beginning as they ought to be- 
 have. 
 
 59
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 I am speaking of what I have seen in 
 humble households. I have seen it in 
 aggravated degree in bigger households ; 
 but, just as I told you yesterday, I am 
 not concerned very much with the multi- 
 millionaire excepting as we are foolish 
 enough to allow ourselves to be hurt by 
 anything that is wrong in his example. 
 I meet just as large a proportion of good 
 people among multi-millionaires as 
 among others; but anything merely af- 
 fecting them is a small question. I am 
 not dealing with them. If they all went 
 wrong, and the rest of the American 
 people went right, the nation would still 
 be all right. 
 
 The man in whom I am primarily inter- 
 ested, the woman in whom I am most 
 interested, is the average man and the 
 average woman, the American whom we 
 see about us running the trolley-cars, 
 
 60
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 running the steam-cars, running every 
 small business, taking care of the small 
 houses, doing all the ordinary things 
 around about us. It is for and to them 
 that I am speaking. 
 
 If the mother teaches the girl that 
 when she comes home she is to sit in the 
 front parlor at ease and let the mother 
 work in the kitchen and run up and 
 down stairs until at the end of the day 
 she is utterly worn out, she not only 
 wrongs herself that I am not con- 
 cerned about, for she is too foolish to 
 have me care very much about her but, 
 what I am concerned about, she inflicts 
 a dreadful wrong on the daughter and 
 upon all with whom the daughter is 
 afterwards to be brought into contact. 
 If the girl trained in such a way is a 
 fundamentally good girl she will finally 
 unlearn the lesson she was taught at 
 
 61
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 home; but it will cost her years of effort 
 to unlearn the lesson; and if she is of 
 weak character she will have been per- 
 manently spoiled. 
 
 And in just the same way with the 
 father and here I am going to say a 
 word especially to the father who is pret- 
 ty well off in this world's goods. If the 
 father brings up the boy in such fashion 
 that he cannot do anything except spend 
 money in vacuous fashion he has not 
 helped the boy, he has hurt him. It 
 would have been better for the boy that 
 the father had never earned money at 
 all than to have earned money if his 
 training is to be in such fashion. Of 
 course, you fathers, it is a great error to 
 think that it is necessary to show need-- 
 less harshness to your sons. I have no 
 patience with that type of twisted Pur- 
 itanism which forbids the father to show 
 
 62
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 love and affection and consideration for 
 his son. You do not make the boy 
 hardier or better by making him miser- 
 able; you do not tend to make him a 
 good citizen by giving him a feeling of 
 sore dislike for his parent. Make him 
 your companion, make him your friend; 
 do all you can for him; and then make 
 him understand that in his turn he must 
 do all he can for you and for the rest of 
 the family. Make it a reciprocal bond 
 between you. But never whether from 
 carelessness or folly let him grow up 
 thinking that it is proper for him to 
 lead a useless or idle life or one of mere 
 pleasure. We have room in this country 
 for a busy leisure class but we have no 
 room for an idle class, I dont care at 
 which end of the social scale, whether 
 of a hobo or a multi-millionaire. 
 
 And one more word to the mother. I 
 
 63
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 have spoken of the mother's training of 
 the daughter. Perhaps it is even worse 
 if the mother permits the son to grow 
 up selfish and without regard for the 
 feeling of others. I remember a good 
 many years ago reading a little story 
 that impressed me much. It described 
 a tired, rather wornout mother getting 
 into a railroad train with her boy. The 
 mother sat by the window in the seat; 
 the minute the little boy discovered that 
 he was not by the window he began 
 "mother, I want to sit by the window"; 
 she replied "mother is tired"; then he, 
 "mother, I want to sit by the window"; 
 she answered "now, Johnnie, you 
 wouldn't ask to sit by the window when 
 poor mother is so tired"; he, pouting 
 and sullen "I want to sit by the win- 
 dow"; she, patiently "Johnnie, I want 
 to look out of the window, I am very 
 
 64
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 tired, I want to rest"; he, louder and 
 more angry, "I want to sit by the 
 window"; whereupon at last the mother 
 let him sit by the window! The author 
 of the story went on to say that some- 
 time in the future a sad little wife would 
 wonder "why men were so inconsider- 
 ate"; and that the blame would rest 
 really as much with Johnnie's unwise 
 mother as with himself. Of course, 
 what the Johnnie of that type needs is 
 a firm parental hand. Let him have 
 discipline in as ample a measure as love. 
 I remember a most excellent back- 
 woods mother whom I once knew who, 
 having disciplined a boy who sadly 
 needed it, was addressed by a rather 
 sentimental lady of my acquaintance as 
 follows: "Oh, my dear Mrs. So and So, 
 I am sure it hurt you worse than it did 
 him"! To which my backwoods friend 
 
 65
 
 The Home and the Child 
 
 responded, "indeed it did not, he had 
 been very bad; and I thoroughly en- 
 joyed it"! 
 
 So my plea today is for that form of 
 applied ethics which lies at the base of 
 every kind of good citizenship. We 
 cannot have good citizenship in the 
 present unless the average man and the 
 average woman do their duty in their 
 homes; we cannot have good citizen- 
 ship in the future unless in the average 
 home the average boy and girl are so 
 brought up that in the future they will 
 be American men and women of the 
 right type, able and anxious to meet all 
 the exacting demands that American 
 citizenship now makes, and that it will 
 make in ever increasing degree upon our 
 people as the generations pass. 
 
 66
 
 THE BIBLE AND THE LIFE OF 
 THE PEOPLE 
 
 I have come here to-day, in the course 
 of a series of lectures upon applied 
 ethics, upon realizable ideals, to speak 
 of the book to which our people owe 
 infinitely the greater part of their store 
 of ethics, infinitely the greater part of 
 their knowledge of how to apply that 
 store to the needs of our every-day life. 
 
 There have been many collections of 
 the sacred books, the sacred writings of 
 the Old and New Testaments many 
 collections of note. Upon an occasion 
 such as this we who think most of all 
 of the King James version of the Bible 
 should be the first to acknowledge our 
 obligation to many of the other versions, 
 especially to the earliest of the great ver- 
 sions, the Vulgate of St. Jerome, a very 
 great version, a version that played an 
 
 67
 
 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 incalculable part in the development of 
 Western Europe, because it put the 
 Bible into the common language of 
 Western Europe, the language known 
 to every man who pretended to any de- 
 gree of learning Latin and therefore 
 gave the Bible to the peoples of the 
 West at a time when the old classic civil- 
 ization of Greece and Rome had first 
 crumbled to rottenness and had then 
 been overwhelmed by the barbarian sea. 
 In the wreck of the old world, Christian- 
 ity was all that the survivors had to 
 cling to; and the Latin version of the 
 Bible put it at their disposal. 
 
 Other versions of the Bible followed 
 from time to time, and gradually men 
 began to put them into the vernaculars 
 of the different countries. Wyclifs 
 Bible is one version to which we must 
 feel under deep obligation. But the 
 
 68
 
 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 great debt of the English-speaking 
 peoples everywhere is to the translation 
 of the Bible that we all know I trust 
 I can say, all here know in our own 
 homes, the Bible as it was put forth in 
 English three centuries ago. No other 
 book of any kind ever written in Eng- 
 lish perhaps no other book ever writ- 
 ten in any other tongue has ever so 
 affected the whole life of a people as this 
 authorized version of the Scriptures has 
 affected the life of the English-speaking 
 peoples. 
 
 I enter a most earnest plea that in our 
 hurried and rather bustling life of to-day 
 we do not lose the hold that our fore- 
 fathers had on the Bible. I wish to see 
 Bible study as much a matter of course 
 in the secular college as in the seminary. 
 No educated man can afford to be igno- 
 rant of the Bible; and no uneducated 
 
 69
 
 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 man can afford to be ignorant of the 
 Bible. Occasional critics, taking sec- 
 tions of the Old Testament, are able to 
 point out that the teachings therein are 
 not in accordance with our own convic- 
 tions and views of morality, and they 
 ignore the prime truth that these deeds 
 recorded in the Old Testament are not 
 in accordance with our theories of 
 morality because of the very fact that 
 these theories are based upon the New 
 Testament, because the New Testament 
 represents not only in one sense the ful- 
 fillment of the Old but in another sense 
 the substitution of the New Testament 
 for the Old in certain vital points of 
 ethics. If critics of this kind would study 
 the morality inculcated by the Old Test- 
 ament among the chosen people, and 
 compare it, not with the morality of to- 
 day, not with the morality created by 
 
 70
 
 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 the New Testament, but with the moral- 
 ity of the surrounding nations of anti- 
 quity, who had no Bible, they would 
 appreciate the enormous advances that 
 the Old Testament even in its most 
 primitive form worked for the Jewish 
 people. The Old Testament did not 
 carry Israel as far as the New Testa- 
 ment has carried us; but it advanced 
 Israel far beyond the point any neigh- 
 boring nation had then reached. 
 
 In studying the writings of the aver- 
 age critic who has assailed the Bible the 
 most salient point is usually his pecu- 
 liar shallowness in failing to understand, 
 not merely the lofty ethical teachings of 
 the Bible as we now know it, but the 
 elemental fact that even the most primi- 
 tive ethical system taught in the primi- 
 tive portions of the Bible, the earliest of 
 the sacred writings, marks a giant stride 
 
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 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 in moral advance when compared with 
 the contemporary ethical conceptions of 
 the other peoples of the day. 
 
 Moreover, I appeal for a study of the 
 Bible on many different accounts, even 
 aside from its ethical and moral teach- 
 ings, even aside from the fact that all 
 serious people, all men who think deeply, 
 even among non-Christians, have come 
 to agree that the life of Christ, as set 
 forth in the four Gospels, represents 
 an infinitely higher and purer morality 
 than is preached in any other book of 
 the world. Aside from this, I ask that 
 the Bible be studied for the sake of the 
 breadth it must give to every man who 
 studies it. I cannot understand the men- 
 tal attitude of those who would put the 
 Bible to one side as not being a book of 
 interest to grown men. What could in- 
 terest men who find the Bible dull? The 
 
 72
 
 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 Sunday newspaper? Think of the differ- 
 ence there must be in the mental make- 
 up of the man whose chief reading in- 
 cludes the one, as compared with the 
 man whose chief reading is represented 
 by the other the vulgarity, the shallow- 
 ness, the inability to keep the mind 
 fixed on any serious subject, which is 
 implied in the mind of any man who can- 
 not read the Bible and yet can take 
 pleasure in reading only literature of the 
 type of the colored supplement of the 
 Sunday paper. Now, I am not speaking 
 against the colored supplement of any 
 paper in its place; but as a substitute for 
 serious reading of the great Book, it re- 
 presents a type of mind which it is gross 
 flattery merely to call shallow. 
 
 I do not ask you to accept the word 
 of those who preach the Bible as an 
 inspired book; I make my appeal not 
 
 73
 
 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 only to professing Christians; I make it 
 to every man who seeks after a high 
 and useful life, to every man who seeks 
 the inspiration of religion, or who en- 
 deavors to make his life conform to a 
 high ethical standard; to every man 
 who, be he Jew or Gentile, whatever his 
 form of religious belief, whatever creed 
 he may profess, faces life with the real 
 desire not only to get out of it what is 
 best, but to do his part in everything 
 that tells for the ennobling and uplifting 
 of humanity. 
 
 I am making a plea, not only for the 
 training of the mind, but for the moral 
 and spiritual training of the home and 
 the church, the moral and spiritual train- 
 ing that has always been found in, and 
 has ever accompanied, the study of the 
 book which in almost every civilized 
 tongue, and in many an uncivilized, can 
 
 74
 
 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 be described as "the Book" with the cer- 
 tainty of having the description under- 
 stood by all listeners. A year and a 
 quarter ago I was passing on foot 
 through the native kingdom of Uganda, 
 in Central Africa. Uganda is the most 
 highly developed of the pure Negro 
 states in Africa. It is the state which 
 has given the richest return for mission- 
 ary labor. It now contains some half- 
 million of Christians, the direction of the 
 government being in the hands of those 
 Christians. I was interested to find that 
 in their victorious fight against, in the 
 first place, heathendom, and, in the next 
 place, Moslemism, the native Christians 
 belonging to the several different sects, 
 both Catholics and Protestants, had 
 had taken as their symbol "the Book," 
 sinking all minor differences among 
 themselves, and coming together on the 
 
 75
 
 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 common ground of their common belief 
 in "the Book" that was the most pre- 
 cious gift the white man had brought to 
 them. 
 
 It is of that book, and as testimony to 
 its incalculable influence for good from 
 the educational and moral standpoint, 
 that the great scientist Huxley wrote in 
 the following words : 
 
 "Consider the great historical fact 
 that for three centuries this book has 
 been woven into the life of all that is 
 noblest and best in English history; 
 that it has become the national epic of 
 Britain; that it is written in the noblest 
 and purest English and abounds in ex- 
 quisite beauties of mere literary form; 
 and, finally, that it forbids the veriest 
 hind, who never left his village, to be 
 ignorant of the existence of other coun- 
 tries and other civilizations of a great 
 
 76
 
 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 past stretching back to the furthest 
 limits of the oldest nations in the world. 
 By the study of what other book could 
 children be so much humanized and 
 made to feel that each figure in that vast 
 historical procession fills, like them- 
 selves, but a momentary space in the in- 
 terval between the Eternities?" 
 
 I ask your attention to this when I 
 plead for the training of children in the 
 Bible. I am quoting, not a professed 
 Christian, but a scientific man whose 
 scientific judgment is thus expressed as 
 to the value of Biblical training for the 
 young. 
 
 And again listen to what Huxley says 
 as to the bearing of the Bible upon those 
 who study the ills of our time with the 
 hope of eventually remedying them: 
 
 "The Bible has been the Magna 
 Charta of the poor and of the oppressed. 
 
 77
 
 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 Down to modern times no State has had 
 a constitution in which the interests of 
 the people are so largely taken into ac- 
 count, in which the duties so much more 
 than the privileges of rulers are insisted 
 upon, as that drawn up for Israel in 
 Deuteronomy and in Leviticus; nowhere 
 is the fundamental truth that the wel- 
 fare of the State in the long run depends 
 upon the righteousness of the citizen so 
 strongly laid down. . . . The Bible is the 
 most democratic book in the world." 
 
 This is the judgment of Huxley, one 
 of the greatest scientific thinkers of the 
 last century. I ask you to train children 
 in the Bible. Never commit the awful 
 error of training the child by making 
 him learn verses of the Bible as a punish- 
 ment. I remember once calling upon a 
 very good woman and finding one of her 
 small sons, with a face of black injury, 
 
 78
 
 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 studying the Bible, and this very good 
 woman said to me with pride, "Johnny 
 has been bad, and he is learning a chap- 
 ter of Isaiah by heart." I could not 
 refrain from saying, "My dear madam, 
 how can you do such a dreadful thing 
 as to make the unfortunate Johnny as- 
 sociate for the rest of his life the noble 
 and beautiful poetry and prophecy of 
 Isaiah with an excessively disagreeable 
 task? You are committing a greater 
 wrong against him than any he has him- 
 self committed." Punish the children in 
 any other way than is necessary; but do 
 not make them look upon the Bible with 
 suspicion and dislike as an instrument of 
 torture, so that they feel that it is a pain 
 to have to read it, instead of, as it ought 
 to be, a privilege and pleasure to read it. 
 In reading the Bible and the beautiful 
 Bible stones that have delighted child- 
 
 79
 
 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 hood for so many generations, my own 
 preference is to read them from the 
 Bible and not as explained even in other- 
 wise perfectly nice little books. Read 
 these majestic and simple stories with 
 whatever explanation is necessary to 
 make the child understand the words; 
 and then the story he will understand 
 without difficulty. 
 
 Of course we must not forget to give 
 whatever explanation is necessary to en- 
 able the child to understand the words. 
 I think every father and mother comes 
 to realize how queerly the little brains 
 will accept new words at times. I re- 
 member an incident of the kind in con- 
 nection with a clergyman to whose 
 church I went when a very small boy. 
 It was a big Presbyterian church in 
 Madison Square, New York; any New 
 Yorker of my age who happens to be 
 
 80
 
 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 present here will probably recollect the 
 church. We had a clergyman one of 
 the finest men that I had ever met, one 
 of the very, very rare men to whom it 
 would be no misuse of words to describe 
 as saintly. He was very fond of one of 
 his little grandsons. This little grand- 
 son showed an entire willingness to 
 come to church and to Sunday-school 
 when there were plenty of people pres- 
 ent; but it was discovered that he was 
 most reluctant to go anywhere near the 
 church when there were not people 
 there. As often happens with a child 
 (every mother knows how difficult it 
 often is to find out just what the little 
 mind is thinking), his parents could not 
 find out for some time what was the 
 matter with the little boy or what he 
 was afraid of in the church. Finally, 
 Dr. Adams, the clergyman, started down 
 
 81
 
 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 to the church and asked his little grand- 
 son to come with him. After a little 
 hesitation the small boy said yes, if his 
 grandfather were coming, he would go. 
 They got inside the church and walked 
 down the aisle, their footsteps echoing 
 in the empty church. The little fellow 
 trotted alongside his grandfather, look- 
 ing with half-frightened eagerness on 
 every side. Soon he said, "Grandfather, 
 where is the Zeal?" The grandfather, 
 much puzzled, responded, "Where is 
 what?" "Where is the Zeal?" repeated 
 the little boy. The grandfather said, 
 "I don't know what you mean; what are 
 you talking of?" "Why, grandfather, 
 don't you know? 'The zeal of thine 
 house hath eaten me up'!" Now that 
 little fellow had been rendered pro- 
 foundly uncomfortable and very sus- 
 picious of the church because he had 
 
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 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 read this statement, had accepted it in 
 literal fashion, and concluded there was 
 some kind of fearful beast dwelling in 
 the church, as to which it behooved him 
 to be on his guard. 
 
 It would be a great misfortune for our 
 people if they ever lost the Bible as one 
 of their habitual standards and guides in 
 morality. In addressing this body, 
 which must contain representatives of 
 many different creeds, I ask you men 
 and women to treat the Bible in the only 
 way in which it can be treated if benefit 
 is to be obtained from it, and that is, as 
 a guide to conduct. I make no pretense 
 to speak to you on dogmatic theology 
 there are probably scores of different 
 views of dogma here represented. There 
 are scores of different ways leading to- 
 ward the same goal; but there is one test 
 which we have a right to apply to the 
 
 83
 
 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 professors of all the creeds the test of 
 conduct. More and more, people who 
 possess either religious belief or aspira- 
 tion after religious belief are growing to 
 demand conduct as the ultimate test of 
 the worth of the belief. I hope that 
 after what I have said no man can sus- 
 pect me of failure rightly to estimate the 
 enormous influence that study of the 
 Bible should have on our lives; but I 
 would rather not see a man study it at 
 all than have him read it as a fetish on 
 Sunday and disregard its teachings on 
 all other days of the week; because, evil 
 though we think the conduct of the man 
 who disregards its teachings on week 
 days, it is still worse if that conduct is 
 tainted with the mean vice of hypocrisy. 
 The measure of our respect for and be- 
 lief in the man and the woman who do 
 try to shape their lives by the highest 
 
 84
 
 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 ethical standards inculcated in the 
 Scriptures must in large part be also the 
 measure of our contempt for those who 
 ostentatiously read the Bible and then 
 disregard its teachings in their dealings 
 with their fellow-men. 
 
 I do not like the thief, big or little; I 
 do not like him in business and I do not 
 like him in politics; but I dislike him 
 most when, to shield himself from the 
 effects of his wrong-doing, he claims 
 that, after all, he is a "religious man." 
 He is not a religious man, save in the 
 sense that the Pharisee was a religious 
 man in the time of the Saviour. The 
 man who advances the fact that he goes 
 to church and reads the Bible, as an off- 
 set to the fact that he has acted like a 
 scoundrel in his public or private rela- 
 tions, only writes his own condemnation 
 in larger letters than before. And so 
 
 85
 
 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 a man or a woman who reads and quotes 
 the Bible as a warrant and an excuse for 
 hardheartedness and uncharitableness 
 and lack of mercy to friend or neighbor 
 is reading and quoting the Bible to his 
 or her own damage, perhaps to his or 
 her own destruction. Let the man who 
 goes to church, who reads the Bible, feel 
 that it is peculiarly incumbent upon him 
 so to lead his life in the face of the world 
 that no discredit shall be brought upon 
 the creed he professes, that no discredit 
 shall attach to the book in accordance 
 with which he asserts that he leads his 
 own life. Sometimes I have seen all 
 of you have seen the appeal made to 
 stand by a man who has done evil, on the 
 ground that he is a pillar of the church. 
 Such a man is a rotten pillar of any 
 church. And the professors of any 
 creed, the men belonging to any church, 
 
 86
 
 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 should be more jealous than any out- 
 sider in holding such a man to account, 
 in demanding that his practice shall 
 square with the high professions of be- 
 lief. Such a man sins not only against 
 the moral law, sins not only against the 
 community as a whole, but sins, above 
 all, against his own church, against all 
 who profess religion, against all who be- 
 long to churches, because he by his life 
 gives point to the sneer of the cynic who 
 disbelieves in all application of Christian 
 ethics to life, and who tries to make the 
 ordinary man distrust church people as 
 hypocrites. Whenever any church mem- 
 ber is guilty of business dishonesty or 
 political dishonesty or offenses against 
 the moral law in any way, those who are 
 members of churches should feel a far 
 greater regret and disappointment than 
 those who are not members. They can- 
 
 87
 
 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 not afford for one moment to let it be 
 supposed that they exact from the at- 
 tenders at church any less strict obser- 
 vance of the moral law than if they did 
 not attend church. They cannot af- 
 ford to let the outside world even for a 
 moment think that they accept church- 
 going and Bible-readers as substitutes 
 for, instead of incitements toward, lead- 
 ing a higher and better and more useful 
 life. We must strive each of us so to 
 conduct our own lives as to be, to a 
 certain extent at least, our brother's 
 keeper. We must show that we actually 
 do take into our own souls the teachings 
 that we read; that we apply to ourselves 
 the Gospel teaching that a corrupt tree 
 cannot bring forth good fruit, and that 
 the sound tree must prove its soundness 
 by the fruit it brings forth; that we ap- 
 ply to ourselves the teachings of the 
 
 88
 
 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 epistle wherein we are warned to be 
 doers of the world and not hearers only. 
 I have asked you to read the Bible for 
 the beautiful English and for the history 
 it teaches, as well as for the grasp it 
 gives you upon the proper purpose of 
 mankind. Of course if you read it only 
 for aesthetic purposes, if you read it 
 without thought of following its ethical 
 teachings, then you are apt to do but 
 little good to your fellow-men; for if 
 you regard the reading of it as an intel- 
 lectual diversion only, and, above all, if 
 you regard this reading simply as an 
 outward token of Sunday respectability, 
 small will be the good that you yourself 
 get from it. Our success in striving to 
 help our fellow-men, and therefore to 
 help ourselves, depends largely upon our 
 success as we strive, with whatever 
 shortcomings, with whatever failures, to 
 
 89
 
 The Bible and the Life of the People 
 
 lead our lives in accordance with the 
 great ethical principles laid down in the 
 life of Christ, and in the New Testament 
 writings which seek to expound and ap- 
 ply his teachings. 
 
 90
 
 THE PUBLIC SERVANT AND THE 
 EIGHTH COMMANDMENT 
 
 I am overcome more and more with 
 your good nature in coming here. I 
 learn a great deal more from you than 
 you can possibly learn from me. 
 
 Today I come to speak on the text 
 "The Public Servant and the Eighth 
 Commandment" and like some other 
 preachers I do not intend to keep purely 
 to that text. I chose the two titles I 
 speak upon today and tomorrow because 
 I wish to lay especial stress upon the 
 prime virtue of the public servant and 
 therefore the prime crime of the un- 
 worthy public servant; and also upon 
 the prime virtue and the corresponding 
 prime crime of the man who writes 
 about the public servant, the man of the 
 newspaper press and magazines. With 
 the latter I shall deal tomorrow. Today 
 
 91
 
 The Public Servant and 
 
 I wish to speak of the public servant. 
 Because the first essential in a public 
 man is honesty, I have chosen as my 
 title the public servant and the eighth 
 commandment; but I wish to speak of 
 much more than the eighth command- 
 ment in connection with the public ser- 
 vant, and I wish to speak of the attitude 
 of the public as well as of the attitude of 
 its servant. 
 
 There used to be in the army an old 
 proverb that there were no bad regi- 
 ments, but plenty of bad colonels. So 
 in private life I have grown to believe 
 that if you always find bad servants in 
 a household you want to look out for the 
 mistress. I wonder if you grasp just 
 what I mean by that? If you always 
 find bad public servants, look out for the 
 public! We here you my hearers and 
 I live in a government where we are 
 
 92
 
 the Eighth Commandment 
 
 the people and in consequence where we 
 are not to be excused if the government 
 goes wrong. There are many countries 
 where the government can be very 
 wrong indeed and where nevertheless it 
 can be said that the people are funda- 
 mentally right, for they don't choose 
 their public servants, they don't choose 
 their government. On the contrary we 
 do choose our government, not tempor- 
 arily but permanently, and in the long 
 run our public servants must necessarily 
 be what we choose to have them. They 
 represent us; they must represent our 
 self-restraint and sense of decency and 
 common sense, or else, our folly, our 
 wickedness, or at least our supine indif- 
 ference in letting others do the work of 
 government for us. Not only should we 
 have the right type of public servants, 
 but we should remember that the wrong 
 
 93
 
 The Public Servant and 
 
 type discredits not only the man himself 
 but each of us whose servant he is. 
 Sometimes I hear our countrymen in- 
 veigh against politicians; I hear our 
 countrymen abroad saying, "Oh, you 
 mustn't judge us by our politicians." I 
 always want to interrupt and answer, 
 "you must judge us by our politicians." 
 We pretend to be the masters we, the 
 people and if we permit ourselves to be 
 ill served, to be served by corrupt and 
 incompetent and inefficient men, then 
 on our own heads must the blame rest. 
 
 The other day I spoke to you of the 
 prime need of having each man act the 
 good citizen first in his own home, and 
 I added that unless he did, he could not 
 be a good citizen. But that is not 
 enough. In addition the man must do 
 his part, not merely in the election of 
 candidates, but in creating the kind of 
 
 94
 
 the Eighth Commandment 
 
 atmosphere which will make the public 
 man unwilling to do wrong, and espe- 
 cially unwilling to permit wrong in its 
 grosser forms. 
 
 I began my education early, imme- 
 diately after leaving college; for about 
 that time I first began to spend a good 
 deal of my time west of the Mississippi, 
 and I also went into the New York legis- 
 lature, a by no means wholly arcadian 
 body. It is a little difficult to persuade 
 me that politically we are growing 
 worse. I do not think so. I thing that 
 politically we have grown a little better 
 during the thirty years that I have 
 watched politics close at hand. We have 
 slipped back, now and then, we have 
 had trouble of every kind local disturb- 
 ances yet on the whole I believe we 
 have grown better and not worse; but 
 there is still ample room for improve- 
 ment! 
 
 95
 
 The Public Servant and 
 
 One of the first things that struck me 
 in the legislature was the amount of 
 downright corruption that I saw and the 
 utter cynicism with which many of the 
 men who practiced the corruption spoke 
 of it. The next thing that struck me, 
 as I grew better acquainted with politi- 
 cal conditions, was the difficulty in 
 arousing the public to an attitude of hos- 
 tility towards that corruption. This 
 was largely because the public declined 
 to be awakened unless they thought the 
 corruption was directly exercised at 
 their own expense; in other words, it 
 availed little to go into a district and say 
 "look at that man's votes on such and 
 such questions, they show that he isn't 
 a straight man," unless the people of the 
 district believed that their own interest 
 was involved in one of the questions 
 upon which the man had voted wrong. 
 
 96
 
 the Eighth Commandment 
 
 For instance, there were in the legisla- 
 ture at that time many country members 
 who were scrupulous to do right, or at 
 least to appear to do right, on the small- 
 est questions affecting their own dis- 
 tricts, but who would go very far wrong 
 indeed when the question was one in- 
 volving some interest in New York City; 
 for they trusted to the fact that their 
 people did not care how they voted on 
 New York City matters as long as they 
 kept straight on matters immediately 
 affecting the constituents themselves. 
 Naturally men who held such a stand- 
 ard were certain when they got into 
 higher offices to be false to their trust. 
 You cannot have unilateral honesty. 
 The minute that a man is dishonest 
 along certain lines, even though he pre- 
 tends to be honest along other lines, you 
 can be sure that it is only a pretense, it 
 
 97
 
 The Public Servant and 
 
 is only expediency; and you cannot trust 
 to the mere sense of expediency to hold 
 a man straight under heavy pressure. I 
 very early made up my mind that it was 
 a detriment to the public to have in pub- 
 lic life any man whose attitude was 
 merely that he would be as honest as the 
 law made it necessary for him to be. 
 The kind of honesty which essentially 
 consists merely in too great acuteness to 
 get into jail is a mighty poor type of 
 honesty upon which to rely; because, up 
 near the border line between what can 
 and what can not be punished by law, 
 there come many occasions when the 
 man can defile the public service, can 
 defy the public conscience, can in spirit 
 be false to his oath, and yet technically 
 keep his skirts clear. When I say that 
 the prime need is that the public servant 
 shall obey the eighth commandment I 
 
 98
 
 the Eighth Commandment 
 
 do not mean merely that he shall keep 
 himself in such shape that a clever law- 
 yer can get him off if he is charged with 
 theft. I mean that he shall be honest 
 intensively and extensively. I mean 
 that he shall act with the same fine sense 
 of honor toward the public and on be- 
 half of the public that we expect to be 
 shown by those neighbors with whom 
 we are willing to trust not only our 
 money, but our good names. If you in- 
 tend to trust a neighbor, the kind of 
 neighbor whom you certainly will not 
 choose is the man of whom it can only 
 be said that you are quite sure you won't 
 be able to get him in jail. The kind of 
 mental acuteness that is shown merely 
 by a thorough study of the best methods 
 of escaping successful criminal proced- 
 ure is not the kind of mental acuteness 
 that you value in your friend, in the man 
 
 99
 
 The Public Servant and 
 
 with whom you have business relations; 
 and it should be the last type of mental 
 ability, the last type of moral attitude, 
 which you tolerate in a public man. 
 
 Perhaps the most dangerous of all 
 public servants, however, is the public 
 servant who gets into office by persuad- 
 ing a section of the public that he will 
 do something that is just a little bit 
 crooked in their interest. I do not care 
 in the least what section of the public is 
 thus persuaded. I do not care whether 
 it is the great corporation man who 
 wishes to see a given individual made 
 judge, or executive officer, or legislator, 
 "because he is our man and he will look 
 out for the rights of property," or 
 whether, on the other hand, it is the 
 wage-worker, the laboring man, who 
 supports some candidate because that 
 candidate announces that he is "the 
 
 100
 
 the Eighth Commandment 
 
 friend of labor," although the man to 
 whom the appeal is made ought to un- 
 derstand also that the candidate is the 
 foe of decency. Capitalist and wage- 
 worker alike will do well to remember 
 that their interests face to face with the 
 public man are primarily as those affect- 
 ing all good American citizens, and that 
 whatever the temporary advantage may 
 be, they irretrievably harm themselves 
 and the children who are to come after 
 them if they permit themselves to be 
 drawn into any other attitude. 
 
 The capitalist who because he thinks 
 it is the interest of his class to have in 
 high office a corrupt man who will serve 
 his class interest is laying up for himself 
 and for his children a day of terrible 
 retribution; for if that type of capitalist 
 has his way long enough he will per- 
 suade the whole community that the in- 
 
 101
 
 The Public Servant and 
 
 terest of the community is bound up in 
 overthrowing every man in public office 
 who serves property, even though he 
 serves it honestly. The corrupt capital- 
 ist may help himself for the moment, 
 and he may be defended by others of his 
 own class on grounds of expediency; but 
 in the end he works fearful damage to 
 his fellows. If a business man cannot 
 run a given business except by bribing 
 or by submitting to blackmail let him 
 get out of it and into some other busi- 
 ness. If he cannot run his business save 
 on condition of doing things which can 
 only be done in the darkness, then let 
 him enter into some totally different 
 field of activity. The test is easy. Let 
 him ask whether he is afraid anything 
 will be found out or not. If he is not, 
 he is all right; if he is, he is all wrong. 
 So much for the capitalist. 
 
 102
 
 the Eighth Commandment 
 
 Let the wage-worker in his turn re- 
 member that the candidate for public 
 office who appeals for his support upon 
 the ground that he will condone lawless 
 violence, that he will look the other way 
 when violence is perpetrated, that he 
 will recognize the rules of a labor organ- 
 ization of any kind as standing above 
 the Constitution and the laws of his 
 country, let the laboring man remember 
 that if he supports such a candidate he 
 in his turn is doing his best to bring 
 about a condition of things where de- 
 mocracy would come to an end, where 
 self-rule would come to an end. Let the 
 capitalist remember that he had better 
 be most shocked at the deeds of his own 
 class, and not at the misdeeds of the men 
 of another class. And let the laboring 
 man remember in his turn that the foe 
 against whom he should most carefully 
 
 103
 
 The Public Servant and 
 
 guard is the corrupt labor man, the 
 labor candidate who preaches violence, 
 envy, class hatred. That is the kind of 
 man who most jeopards the welfare of 
 the wageworker, just as the successful 
 corruptionist, the capitalist who has 
 reached a high position in the financial 
 world by the practice of acts that will 
 not bear the light of day, is really the 
 worst foe of the very property classes 
 that are sometimes so misguided as to 
 rally to his defense when he is attacked. 
 I shall tell you one story: In the old 
 days I used to have a cow ranch in the 
 short grass country. At that time there 
 were no fences within a thousand miles 
 of it. If a calf was passed by on the 
 roundup so that next year when it was 
 a yearling and was not following any 
 cow it was unbranded, it was called a 
 maverick. It was range custom or range 
 
 104
 
 the Eighth Commandment 
 
 law that if a maverick were found on any 
 range the man finding it would put on 
 the brand of that range. One day I had 
 hired a new cow-puncher, and when he 
 and I were riding we struck a maverick. 
 It was on a neighbor's range, the Thistle 
 Range. The puncher roped and threw 
 the maverick; we built a little fire of 
 sage-brush, and took out the cinch iron 
 and heated it to run on the brand. When 
 he started to run on the brand I said to 
 him "the Thistle brand"; he answered, 
 "that's all right, boss, I know my busi- 
 ness." In a minute I said "hold on, 
 you're putting on my brand"; to which 
 he answered "Yes, I always put on the 
 boss's brand." I said "Oh, well, you go 
 back to the house and get your time." 
 He rose, saying "What's that for, I was 
 putting on your brand"; and I closed 
 the conversation with the remark "Yes, 
 
 105
 
 The Public Servant and 
 
 my friend, and if you will steal for me 
 you will steal from me." That applies 
 in lots of occupations besides those of 
 the cow punchers. Nowhere does it 
 apply more clearly than in public life. 
 
 One of the pains of our development 
 as a people has been the tendency to 
 deify what is called "smartness," mean- 
 ing by smartness adroitness and skill 
 unaccompanied by any scruple in con- 
 nection with the observance of a moral 
 law. We have all of us heard I have 
 heard it in the West as well as in the 
 East some man alluded to as an awful 
 scoundrel, and another person replying 
 "Oh yes, perhaps he ain't quite straight, 
 but I tell you, that fellow is smart !" You 
 must yourselves have heard at times this 
 kind of statement made about some 
 scoundrel whom you could not under- 
 stand decent men supporting; and the 
 
 106
 
 the Eighth Commandment 
 
 statement is acted upon by many little 
 men, and by many big men, both in 
 business life and in political life. Well, 
 we shall never reach the proper standard 
 in public service or in private conduct 
 until we have a public opinion so 
 aroused, so resolute, so intelligent, that 
 it shall be understood that we are more 
 bitter against the scoundrel that suc- 
 ceeds than against the scoundrel that 
 fails. 
 
 The other day I noticed a brief state- 
 ment made by a certain Senator, which, 
 as far as I have seen, has not been com- 
 mented on at all, but which struck me as 
 highly significant. The Senator in 
 question had been defending Mr. Lori- 
 mer, and in alluding to some of the men 
 who had testified that they had been 
 bribed to vote for the Illinois Senator, 
 he quite casually remarked that in his 
 
 107
 
 The Public Servant and 
 
 experience a knave was always a fool. 
 His idea was that no very high grade 
 intelligence was ever found in a knave. 
 The Senator was entirely wrong. The 
 knave that fails is usually a fool, but the 
 knave that succeeds may be a very intel- 
 ligent man, and his intelligence when 
 unaccompanied by any trace of moral 
 instinct, merely makes him infinitely the 
 most dangerous man that this commu- 
 nity can bring forth; and the Senator in 
 the remark he made came dangerously 
 near assuming the very dangerous posi- 
 tion that a knave who is sufficiently able 
 is therefore relieved from the odium of 
 knavery. 
 
 We ought to admire intelligence and 
 ability; but only when the intelligence 
 and ability are controlled and guided by 
 the will to do right. Intelligence and 
 ability divorced from the moral instinct 
 
 108
 
 the Eighth Commandment 
 
 merely make the man an infinitely dan- 
 gerous wild beast whom it is our busi- 
 ness to hunt out of the political life, and, 
 so far as we can, out of the business life, 
 of the community. 
 
 It has been finely said that the su- 
 preme task of humanity is to subordi- 
 nate the whole fabric of civilization to 
 the service of the soul. This does not 
 mean that we are to neglect the things 
 of the body. It means that we are to 
 treat the welfare of the body as neces- 
 sary, as a good in itself; but still more 
 as a good because upon that welfare we 
 can build the higher welfare of the soul. 
 There is a soul in the community, a soul 
 in the nation, just exactly as there is a 
 soul in the individual; and exactly as the 
 individual hopelessly mars himself if he 
 lets his conscience be dulled by the con- 
 stant repetition of unworthy acts, so the 
 
 109
 
 The Public Servant and 
 
 nation will hopelessly blunt the popular 
 conscience if it permits its public men 
 continually to do acts which the nation 
 in its heart of hearts knows are acts that 
 cast discredit upon our whole public life. 
 It is an old and a trite saying that our 
 actions have more effect upon our prin- 
 ciples than our principles upon our ac- 
 tions. I remember some time ago out 
 on the range listening to a fine old fellow 
 speaking to his nephew who was a fine 
 young man, but nervous in his strange 
 surroundings, and entirely unaccus- 
 tomed to horses. The young fellow had 
 asked his uncle how he could grow fear- 
 less in handling horses, because, he said, 
 he was sure that if he only could get so 
 that he would not be afraid of them he 
 could handle them all right. The old 
 uncle responded, "Now, I'll tell you, you 
 go ahead and handle them as if you were 
 
 no
 
 the Eighth Commandment 
 
 not afraid of them and gradually you 
 will stop being afraid of them." In other 
 words, the boy could not afford to wait 
 until he stopped being afraid of the 
 horse before he rode it. He had to ride 
 until he stopped being afraid of it. He 
 had to get the habit of not being afraid 
 of it, and when once he had acquired the 
 habit of riding as if he were not afraid, 
 all cause for worry disappeared and 
 gradually all fear itself disappeared. It 
 is just the same way in public life. If 
 you habitually suffer your public repre- 
 sentatives to be dishonest you will grad- 
 ually lose all power of insisting upon 
 honesty. If you let them continually 
 do little acts that are not quite straight 
 you will gradually induce in their minds 
 the mental attitude which will make it 
 hopeless to get from them anything that 
 is not crooked. If in this state, in Cali- 
 
 111
 
 The Public Servant and 
 
 fornia, or in New York, you for a gen- 
 eration permit big corporations to pur- 
 chase favors to which they are not en- 
 titled you will breed up a race of public 
 men and business men who accept that 
 condition of things as normal. And 
 then, my friends, when you finally wake 
 up I wish you would remember that 
 great though their blame may be your 
 blame is even greater for having per- 
 mitted such a condition of things to 
 arise. 
 
 When the awakening comes, you will 
 undoubtedly have to change the ma- 
 chinery of the law in order to meet the 
 conditions that have become so bad, but 
 do not forget that no nation was ever 
 yet saved by governmental machinery 
 alone. You must have the right kind 
 of law; but the best law that the wit of 
 man can devise will amount to nothing 
 
 112
 
 the Eighth Commandment 
 
 if you have not the right kind of spirit 
 in the man behind the law. And again, 
 friends, when you finally revolt, as re- 
 volt you will and must against being 
 ruled by corporations, and when you 
 assume the power over them, then is the 
 time to remember that it is your duty to 
 be honest to them just as much as to 
 exact honesty from them; and that if 
 you are guilty of the folly and iniquity 
 of doing wrong at their expense, you 
 have not made a step in advance, even 
 though you have stopped them from 
 doing wrong at your expense. You 
 must demand honesty or you are not 
 men; and you must do honesty or you 
 are not decent men. 
 
 Sometimes I have been asked as to 
 why I draw the distinction in need of 
 governmental action between the big 
 business corporation and the smaller 
 
 113
 
 The Public Servant and 
 
 corporation. I think it is perfectly 
 clear. Each one of us deals in his do- 
 mestic relations with a number of differ- 
 ent men, the grocer, the dry goods mer- 
 chant, the carpenter, the butcher, the 
 baker, and a number of others. Now, 
 we do not need any governmental help 
 in dealing with those men, because they 
 are about our size. If the grocer doesn't 
 give you the proper kind of goods you 
 will change the grocer, and if you don't 
 pay the grocer he will change you. But 
 if the grocer becomes I use the tech- 
 nical terminology a captain of indus- 
 try and accumulates a great fortune and 
 joins with other men of the same type 
 in a great business a great railroad, a 
 great oil or coal company, I don't care 
 what it is then they create a mighty 
 artificial entity called a corporation, and 
 no one of us individually can deal satis- 
 
 114
 
 the Eighth Commandment 
 
 factorily with that corporation because 
 we are dealing with an entity that is 
 not our size. You can change the gro- 
 cer if he serves you ill; but if you live 
 along the line of the only railway in the 
 country and wish to ship goods you 
 must ship them on the railway's terms 
 or not ship them at all. That is the only 
 alternative. If you are dealing with a 
 big corporation that controls all the pro- 
 ducts of an industry or if you are work- 
 ing for that corporation, you must ac- 
 cept what it gives or accept nothing. 
 The situation is reversed from what it 
 was previously. Therefore it becomes 
 necessary to replace our individual 
 strength by the strength of all of us col- 
 lectively, so that we may have to repres- 
 ent us an artificial entity as big as the 
 corporation. If the corporation works 
 only inside a state, why then this entity 
 
 115
 
 The Public Servant and 
 
 must be the state government; if it 
 works in a number of different states, 
 then we invoke the only man big enough 
 to deal with it Uncle Sam. 
 
 And now how shall Uncle Sam deal 
 with it? Well, fundamentally just ex- 
 actly as we deal with the grocer and the 
 grocer with us. If we do not pay the 
 grocer enough to give him a profit he 
 will either have to abandon serving us 
 or he will have to get out of business. 
 He cannot run his business unless we 
 pay him enough for him to make money. 
 It is just the same with a big corpora- 
 tion. If we insist upon making stipula- 
 tions on behalf of the Government, on 
 behalf of the people, such that the cor- 
 poration cannot carry them out and give 
 any money to those who have built it 
 up, why either that corporation will quit 
 business or at least no other corporation 
 
 116
 
 the Eighth Commandment 
 
 will go into business. On the other 
 hand, if each householder here always 
 pays all his bills without looking into 
 them it does not show that he has a nice 
 disposition, it shows that he is a fool. 
 In the same way I want Uncle Sam to 
 do scrupulous justice to the corporation, 
 but I want him to say in return, now I 
 want you to behave yourself, I have no 
 doubt that you would like to behave 
 yourself; but whether you would or 
 would not, 1 will see that you do behave 
 yourself. 
 
 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 invest- 
 ment it gives to the public in return an 
 
 117
 
 The Public Servant and 
 
 ample service for the reward it receives. 
 More and more we must shape condi- 
 tions 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 undesir- 
 able condition, of giving to all men 
 equality of reward. As long as human 
 nature is what it is there will be in- 
 equality 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 in- 
 
 118
 
 the Eighth Commandment 
 
 justice. 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 re- 
 ward than at present for some forms of 
 activity that do not represent real ser- 
 vice at all. There must be an oppor- 
 tunity 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 help- 
 ing hand to him. Help him up; but 
 when he has been helped up then it is 
 his duty and business to walk for him- 
 self. Help him up; but if he lies down, 
 you cannot carry him. You will not do 
 any good to him and you will interfere 
 
 119
 
 The Public Servant and 
 
 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 foun- 
 tain 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 
 
 120
 
 the Eighth Commandment 
 
 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 de- 
 mands and practices honesty. 
 
 I plead for honesty in the public ser- 
 vant, 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 in- 
 telligence. 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 gener- 
 ous and considerate justice. 
 
 Last year I was in the Old World, and 
 wherever I went I encountered two 
 
 121
 
 The Public Servant and 
 
 phases of feeling that seemed contradic- 
 tory. 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 coun- 
 try where the ideal of justice between 
 man and man had been at least partially 
 realized. And everywhere I went 1 
 found also, oh, my friends, a very differ- 
 ent feeling, a feeling of doubt and mis- 
 trust 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 busi- 
 ness corruption or mob violence in this 
 country, it saddens the heart of all be- 
 lievers in popular government, every- 
 where; and it is a subject for sneering 
 mirth to every reactionary, to every man 
 who disbelieves that the people can 
 
 122
 
 the Eighth Commandment 
 
 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 ap- 
 peal made to us for our own sakes and 
 for the sake of our children, we can be 
 moved by an appeal made for other peo- 
 ple. 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 chil- 
 dren who are to come after us, but that 
 we are also bound thus to act because 
 all over the world the peoples are look- 
 ing 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. 
 
 123
 
 THE SHAPING OF PUBLIC OPIN- 
 ION AND THE NINTH COM- 
 MANDMENT 
 
 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 
 embarassed. 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 de- 
 pends so purely upon the spirit in which 
 I give it and you take it. 
 
 124
 
 and the Ninth Commandment 
 
 What I have to say amounts to ab- 
 solutely 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 
 
 125
 
 The Shaping of Public Opinion 
 
 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 pos- 
 sibly be delivered by an officer on the 
 field would be hopelessly marred if im- 
 mediately afterwards the officer went to 
 the rear; and no heartiness of enthus- 
 iasm 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 
 
 126
 
 and the Ninth Commandment 
 
 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 trans- 
 lated 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 hither- 
 tofore 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. 
 
 127
 
 The Shaping of Public Opinion 
 
 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 con- 
 duct, 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 
 
 128
 
 and the Ninth Commandment 
 
 was, that theory was useless if when he 
 heard the bullets he was unable to con- 
 trol his tendency to run away. The 
 soldier needed a lofty ideal, and he need- 
 ed 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 con- 
 tact, before he can hope to amount to 
 anything in the world at large. 
 
 On the third day I spoke of what has 
 
 129
 
 The Shaping of Public Opinion 
 
 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 ex- 
 ample from the army. I spoke of the 
 right feeling to have toward the success- 
 ful 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 crea- 
 
 130
 
 and the Ninth Commandment 
 
 ture 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 success- 
 fully 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 re- 
 ward 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 
 
 131
 
 The Shaping of Public Opinion 
 
 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 render- 
 ing 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 in- 
 terest 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 pub- 
 lic but swindling the public. And again 
 it is to our interest to discourage the 
 fortune that represents service, but ser- 
 vice 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 sol- 
 
 132
 
 and the Ninth Commandment 
 
 dier 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 livlihood, 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 com- 
 rade 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 re- 
 quirements of a good comrade, if he was 
 a man to be trusted in battle and on the 
 
 133
 
 The Shaping of Public Opinion 
 
 march, if he was a man who could be 
 counted upon to do his part and a little 
 more than his part in whatever emer- 
 gency arose, then the soldier worth his 
 salt, stood by his comrade and recog- 
 nized in him a man entitled to be trusted 
 in battle and on the march. If the com- 
 rade 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-million- 
 aire or a wage-worker, whether the 
 member of a big corporation or the 
 
 134
 
 and the Ninth Commandment 
 
 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 mat- 
 ter 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 can- 
 not 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 pub- 
 lic 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 im- 
 portant position, a very responsible posi- 
 tion. He deserves cordial praise if he 
 
 135
 
 The Shaping of Public Opinion 
 
 does well, and the heartiest condemna- 
 tion if he does badly. But after all, in 
 a country like ours, where public opinion 
 rules, he does not occupy quite so im- 
 portant 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 as- 
 sassinate an upright and honest public 
 servant doing his duty is no greater than 
 
 136
 
 and the Ninth Commandment 
 
 the infamy of the creature who tries to 
 assassinate an honest man's character, 
 and who irretrievably damages the pub- 
 lic 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 leg- 
 islators, the man who buys a seat in a 
 legislative body, or buys an executive 
 position the newspaper man who up- 
 
 137
 
 The Shaping of Public Opinion 
 
 holds the crooked judge, the crooked 
 legislator or executive officer, who up- 
 holds 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 indespensible 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 fair- 
 ly 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 
 
 138
 
 and the Ninth Commandment 
 
 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 in- 
 cidentally, the offense is just as great 
 if they lie to gratify the spirit of sensa- 
 tionalism 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 inter- 
 ests can be viler, or can play a more con- 
 
 139
 
 The Shaping of Public Opinion 
 
 temptible part in American politics, than 
 the Ananias muckraker type of maga- 
 zine, 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 serv- 
 ing 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 dis- 
 honesty 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 suffi- 
 
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 and the Ninth Commandment 
 
 cient 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 
 
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 The Shaping of Public Opinion 
 
 a frame of mind you have done more 
 than can be done in any other way to- 
 wards ruining our citizenship, towards 
 ruining popular and governmental hon- 
 esty 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 thor- 
 oughly reprehensible a scoundrel and 
 when I say scoundrel I am speaking 
 with scientific precision and with moder- 
 ation 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 
 
 142
 
 and the Ninth Commandment 
 
 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 corres- 
 pond 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 legisla- 
 tion which will punish the circulation of 
 untruth, and above all of slanderous un- 
 
 143
 
 The Shaping of Public Opinion 
 
 truth, 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 undoubt- 
 edly 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 ser- 
 vant, and also misinforming them as to 
 the character of that man in public life 
 
 144
 
 and the Ninth Commandment 
 
 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 Ben- 
 nett. Whatever distinction it has is im- 
 plied in its being the founder, the begin- 
 ner, 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 
 
 145
 
 The Shaping of Public Opinion 
 
 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 re- 
 collect 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 proceed- 
 ings against the Sugar Trust, partly for 
 rebates and partly for swindling the 
 
 146
 
 and the Ninth Commandment 
 
 United States Government by debauch- 
 ing Custom House employees; he re- 
 covered, 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 inter- 
 ests"). He conducted several of such 
 suits. Among other matters his atten- 
 tion was brought to the fact that the 
 "New York Herald" was carrying a "per- 
 sonal" column of the vilest description. 
 He sued in person James Gordon Ben- 
 nett, the editor and proprietor of the 
 "Herald" for violation of the law against 
 circulating obscene literature through 
 the mails. Mr. Bennett was living in 
 
 147
 
 The Shaping of Public Opinion 
 
 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 ef- 
 fort was made to avoid having Bennett 
 brought in person to New York City to 
 plead. Every species of pressure and in- 
 fluence was brought to bear on Stimson, 
 and ultimately on me, to get Stimson to 
 permit the plea to be entered in Ben- 
 nett'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 repre- 
 sented that if we would agree to do this 
 the "Herald" would be most friendly 
 with us, that the "Herald" was very in- 
 fluential, that we ought not to anger it, 
 that to do so would be a very bad thing 
 politically, etc., etc. And Stimson ans- 
 wered that when he came to enforce the 
 
 148
 
 and the Ninth Commandment 
 
 criminal law he knew no distinction be- 
 tween criminals, and that, just as the 
 poorest and most friendless wrongdoer 
 would have to appear in person to ans- 
 wer to a criminal charge, so the editor of 
 the greatest and most wealthy news- 
 paper 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 
 
 149
 
 The Shaping of Public Opinion 
 
 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 ig- 
 norance 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 administra- 
 tion, 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 munici- 
 pality, in any state or in the nation can 
 possibly be. Conduct such as that re- 
 presents 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 
 
 ISO
 
 and the Ninth Commandment 
 
 public life. No greater crime can be 
 committed against the body politic; and 
 particularly in this case, where the ac- 
 tion 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 misrepresenta- 
 tions and falsehoods of the "Herald" 
 about the men who had thus brought it 
 to justice. 
 
 151
 
 The Shaping of Public Opinion 
 
 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 commit- 
 tees, and that it subscribed to the Re- 
 publican Party in a Republican state and 
 to the Democratic Party in a Demo- 
 cratic state. The Sugar Trust was non- 
 partisan in its attitude. In your turn, I 
 ask you people here, whatever your poli- 
 tics 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 par- 
 ties 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 dis- 
 honesty and indecency are involved; 
 
 152
 
 and the Ninth Commandment 
 
 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 crea- 
 tion of an opinion which shall demand 
 truth and decency in the press and the 
 magazines. Do what you can, by pri- 
 vate 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 mis- 
 leads the public, and wilfully lies to the 
 public, on any question of interest to the 
 
 153
 
 The Shaping of Public Opinion 
 
 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. 
 
 154
 
 A f\ **' '"*' 'III