The Billings gazette. [volume] (Billings, Mont.) 1896-1919, 1903-02-20

regulation, will find it set forth in his
own words in his essay On Latitude
and Longitude Among R~eformers,"
published in that volume entitled
"The Strenuous Life" In that arti-
Gle he discusses the difference be-
tween Crank" reformers and reform.
ers who take a sane view of condi-
tions a. they exist, and strive to do
the best they can with them. He ad-
mits that it is necessary and right,
on rare occasions, to draw apart from
the world as it is, and to stand for
some principal or ideal. But those
occasions, he argues are rare, and
the reformer who is most useful is
the M who keeps in touch with mis-
fellow men, and, while never abandon
ing the ideal, is willing to make use
of the imperfect instrumentalities at
his hand to bring about some small
improvement, something which will be
a step in the right direction.
! President Roosevelt has alluded to
this essay, in discussing this legisla-
tive situation in the matter of trust
regulation, and has asked some of
his friends to examine it for light
on his present position. The presi-
dent is having the opportunity, rarely
presented, for applying theories,
which were evolved and formulated
as such, to a concrete condition o.
facts. Here is a bit of the theory
which applies to the matter in nand:
cat times a man must cut loose
from his associates, and stand alone
for a great cause; but the necessity
for such action is almost as rare as
the necessity for a revolutions; and
to take such ground continually, in
season and out of season, is the sign
of an unhealthy nature. 1t is not
possible to lay down an infexible
rule as to when compromise is right
and when wrong; when it is a sign
of the highest craftsmanship to tenn
porize, and when it is merely a proof
of weakness. Now and then n can
stand uncompromisingly for a naked
principle and force people up to it.
This is always the attractive course;
but in certain great crisises it may
he a very wrong course. Compro-
mise, in the proper sense, merely
r, n ne ont in tho 1,ronnr concn
opportunities should merely mean do
ing the best possible with the actual
conditions as they exist. A compro-
mise which results in a half-step to-
ward evil is all wrong, just as the
o%portunist who saves himself for the
moment by adopting a policy which
is fraught with futur disaster is all
wrong; but no less wrong is the atti-
tude of those who will not come to
an agreement through which, or will
not follow the course by which, it is
alone possible to accomplish practical
results for good.
These two attitudes; the attitude
of defying mere efficiency, and sue
cess, without regard to the moral
qualities lying behind it, and the atti-
tude of disregarding efficiency, disre-
garding practical results, are the
Scylla and Charybdis between which
every earnest reformer, every politi-
clan who desires to make the name
of his profession a term of honor in
stead of shame, must steer. He must
avoid both under penalty of wreck
age and it avails him nothing to have
avoided one, if he founders on the
other.
people are apt to speak as if in
POLITICAL life. public life, it ought to be
a mere case of striving upward
striving toward a high peak. The
Simile is i~nexact. Every man who is
striving to do good public work is
travelling along a ridge-crest, with the
gulf of failure on each side-the gulf
of ineficiency on the one side, the
gulf of unrighteousness on the other.
All kinds of forces are continually
playing on him, to shove him first
into one gulf and then into the other;
and even a wise and good man, unless
he braves hihself with uncommon
firmness and foresight, as he is push
ed this way and that, will find that
his course becomes a pronounced zig.
gag instead of a straight line; and
if it becomes too pronounced he is
lost, no matter to which side the zig
gag may take him. Nor is he lost
only as regards his own career. What
is far more serious, his power of do
ing useful service to the public is at