The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1903-05-05
THE PRACTICAL AND THE IDEAL IN PUBLIC
AFFAIRS. )

S N6ASS
All men in whose character there is not an ele-
ment of hardened baseness must admit the need
in our public life of those qualities which we
somewhat vaguely group together when we speak
Of reform" and all men of sound mind must also
admit the need of efficiency. There are, of course,
men of such low moral type, or Of such ingrained
c~ynicism, that they do not believe in the possibil-
iy of making anything better, or do not care
to see things better. There are also men who are
slightly disordered mentally, or who are cursed
with a moral twist which makes them champion
reforms less from a desire to do good to others
than as a kind of tribute to their own righteous
ness, for the sake of emphasizing their own supe-
riority. From neither of these classes can we
get any real help in the u~nending struggle for
righteousness. There remains the great body of
the people, including the entire body of those
through whom the salvation of the people must
ultimately be worked out. All these men combine
or seek to combine in varying degrees the quality
of striving after the ideal, that is, the quality
which makes men reformers, and the quality of
SO striving through practical methods-the quail
ity which makes men efficient. Both qualities are
absolutely essential. The absence of either makes
the presence of the other worthless or worse.
If there is one tendency of the day which more
than any other is unhealthy and undesirable, it is
the tendency to defy mere "smartness," unaccom-
panied by a sense of moral accountability. We
shall never make our republic what it should be
until as a people we thoroughly understand and
put in practice the doctrine that success is abhor-
rent if attained by the sacrifice of the funda-
mental principles of morality. The successful
man, whether in business or in politics, who has
risen by constituencies swindling of his neighbours,
by deceit and chicanery, by INSCRIPTIONS boldness
and INSCRIPTIONS cunning, stands toward society
as a dangerous wild beast. The mean and cring-
ing admiration which such a career commando
among those who think c~rookedly or not at all
makes this kind of success perhaps the most dan
gerous of all the influences that threaten our ma
tional life. Our standard of public and private
conduct will never be raised to the proper level I'M
til we make the scoundrel who succeeds feel the
weight of a hostile public opinion even more
strongly than the scoundrel who fails.
On the other hand, mere beating the air, mere
visionary adherence to a nebulous and possibly
highly undesirable ideal, is utterly worthless. The
clustered virtue which timidly shrinks from all
contact with the rough world of actual life, and
the uneasy, self-conscious vanity which misnames
itself virtue, and which declines to cooperate with
whatever does not adopt its own fantastic stand
ard, are rather worse than valueless, because they
tend to rob the forces of good of elements on
which they ought to be able to count in the cease
less contest with the forces of evil. 1t is true that
the impracticable idealist differs from the hard
working, sincere man who in practical fashion,
and by deeds as well as by words, strives in some
sort actually to realize his ideal; but the differ
ence lies in the fact that the first is impracticable,
not in his having a high ideal, for the ideal of the
other may be even higher.
These two attitudes, the attitude of deifying
mere efficiency, mere success, without regard to
the moral qualities lying behind it, and the atti-
tude of disregarding efficiency, disregarding prac-
teal results, are the Scylla and Gharybdis between
which every earnest reformer, every politician
who desires to make the name of his profession a
term of honor instead of shame, must steer. He