The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-01-03
OF THE TIMES
ORGANIZATION TIA KING THE PLACE
OF INDIVIDUAL EFFORT.
interesting Address by President
Hadley, OF Yale, at the ConvOca-
ton of Chicago University.

CHICAGO. Jan. 2.-The convocation Of
the University of Chicago was held here
to-day. President Hadley, Of Yale, was the
stellar magnet and Studebaker Hall was
packed with an enthusiastic throng. Presi-
dent Harper introduced Mr.. Hadley, who
delivered the convocation address. 1t was
expected President Harper would an
nounce gifts to the university aggregating
S3,675,000, but this matter was deferred.
Mr.. Hadley, in the course of his address,
said:
Organization in business, In local poll
tics and in national politics has brought
with 1t an inequality of opportunity and
an unfairness of conditions in which the
game of life is played. Competitive bus
mess is giving place to trusts. The town
meeting has been s~upplanted by the or
ganized municipality. The old federation
or states with strong traditions of home
rule has become a centralized nation,
reaching out beyond its old borders to rule
over nations less civilized than itself.
Under these circumstances it becomes
impossible for the community to rest COM
pletely in that egotistic morality which
seemed sufficient for the needs of a gem
Grafton earlier. We can no longer rely on
competition to protect the consumers
against abuse. when industry has become
so highly organized that all production
is centralized in the control of a single
body. 1t is no longer true, in the sense
That 1t was fifty years ago, that each man
may be left free to manage his own bus
mess and that the community will find it's
work best done as a consequence of such
freedom. Commerce and industry are no
longer to be regarded as games where we
have nothing to do but to applaud the
most skillfrl player when he wins, and
rest in the assurance that his triumph is
in line with the best interests of the COM
munity as a whole. What once was re-
garded as a game has now become a trust,
not merely in the superficial and accidental
sense in which the name trade Is now ap-
piled to all combinations of a capital, but
behalf of the public, which it is in the
I power of those who control this capital to
use well or ILL at their pleasure, without
adequate restraint from any quarter.
Where competition is thus become a
remote contingency and where law is al
most necessarily inadequate unless 1t may
be made so strict as to forbid the good no
less than the evil in private business en-
terprise, a new system of ethics Is a matter
Of vital necessity for the American people
a system which shall treat the director
no longer as an individual pursuing pri-
vate business of his own with the right to
resent the suggestion that he should con-
duct 1T unselfshly, but as having moral re-
sponsibilities to his stockholders, his work.
men and to the consumers that purchase
his goods or his services. In the absence
of such an ethical advance no political or
legal solution Of the so-called trust problem
is likely to be effective.
OutI tlcre Is q n0dme reform IN
the code of political ethics which the
community imposes upon its members,
public trusts will be no more adequately
controlled than private ones. Nay, they are
likely to be even less adequately controlled,
because a public official. holding his power
as the tool Of a ring, and acknowledging
no alliance to standards higher than those
which have made his organization success
full, Is, as q rule, more firmly intrenched in
authority than the representative of any
private corporation. however extensive or
powerful. Until such a change is made
the socialistic ideal Of reforming abuse
of private trusts by the substitution of
public trust will be but the substitution
of one set of masters for another.
IF this difficulty is felt in internal af-
fairs, where those who suffer are at any
rate citizens n men of action with the
power to make their protests heaI. -, even
where they cannot make their resistance
successful, how much worse will 1t be in
dealing with colonies and dependencies.
Under an imperialistic policy our govern
ment cannot remain what 1t was. 1t must
remain a game in which the struggle for
success is as far as possible disassOciated
from the moral sense OF the participants.
1t will involve either a direct breach of
own experience with problems other than
these and the experience of England with
this particular problem both warrant us in
the belief that we shall move towards a
better solution rather than towards a
worse.
"A country which has, in so many of it's
parts. passed in a single generation from
the lawlessneSs of frontier life to the ex-
treme of legality may readily in a genera
ton more pass from a state where con-
ceptions of public duty are bounded by
legality alone, TO one wnere they are in
spired by a moral obligation which will
carry into the conduct of public affairs
the principles and the sentiments which we
recognize as private ones"