The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-05-16
ROOSETELT ON MORALITY.
The Proper Attitude of Man Toward
Wealth aud Vice Versa.

Buffalo, N. Y, May 15.--Governor
Roosevelt was the principal guest and
speaker at the dinner given by the In
dependent club in the banquet hall of
the Ellicott Square club tonight. The
hall was crowded and the governor was
given a most enthusiastic reception. The
governors subject was THE Use and
Abuse of Property In part, he said:
II want to talk to you of the attitude
that should properly be observed by leg
islators and by executive officers toward
wealth, and the attitude that should be
observed in return by men of means,
and especially by corporations towards
the body polite and toward their fellow
citizens. | utterly distrust the man of
whom it is continually said: oh, he is
a good fellow, but of course, in politics,
he plays politics.
''It is about as bad for man to pro-
fess, and for those that listen to him by
their plaudits to insist upon his profess
ing, something to which he knows he
cannot live up to, as it is for him to go
below what he ought to do because il
he gets into the habit of lying to him
self and to his audience as to what he
intends to do, it is certain to eat away
his moral fibre He wont be able then
to stand up to what he knows ought
to be done, The temptation of the
average politician is to promise every
thing to the reformers and then to do
everything for the organization. I
think ! can say that whatever I have
promised, on the stump or off the
stump, either expressly or impliedly, to
either organization or reformers | have
kept my promise; and / should keep it
Just as much If the reformers approved
or if the organization disapproved and
vice-versa. l wish 7 could warn all my
countrymen against that most degrad-
ing of processes, the process of deifica-
ton OF any man for what we are pleased
to term smartness, the deification of
mere intellectual acuteness. wholly un-
accompanied by moral responsibility,
wholly without reference to whether it
is exercised in accordance or not in ac-
cordance with the elementary rules of
morality. If there is one thing which T
should like to eradicate from the char
acter of any American it is the dread
full practice of paying a certain mean
admiration and homage to the man
who, whether in business or in politics
achieves success at the cost of sacrific-
ing all those principles for the lack of
which in the eye of any righteous man, |
no possible achievement or success can
in any way compensate. That applies
just as much to the smart politician as
it applies to the INSCRIPTIONS man of
affairs who makes fortune illegitimate-
W in some form of gambling, sambiins !
with loaded dice.
ANY man who has had to do with
our legislative bodies, as senator, as
as congressman, especially |
if he has been speaker of the lower |
house (Slancing at Hon. j. NJ e. |
O'Grady), knows, as | have known, as !
have seen again and again during the |
the three years that l served in the as |
that you find that as a rule the |
man who is the loudest denouncer of |
wealth, spelling corporate !
with large c and wealth with a large |
w, was the most inflammable in his
insistance, in public, that he will not
permit the liberties of the countries to |
be subverted by the men of means. is
himself the very man for whom you
want to look out most sharply when
there comes. up something which some
corrupt corporation does really want