The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-06-29

main a passenger all his life. But We have a right to expect that the men who come out of Harvard will do some thing more than merely pull their own weight. We have a right to expect that they will count as positive forces for the betterment of their fellow countrymen; and they can thus count only if they combine the power pf de- votion to a lofty ideal with practical common sense in striving to realize this ideal.
 This nation never stood in greater need than now of having among it's leaders men Of lofty ideals. which they try to live up to and not merely to talk of We need men with these ideals in
 public life, and we need them just as much in business and in such a profes-
 sion as the law. We can by statute es-
 tablish only those exceedingly rough
 lines of morality, the over-passing of
 which means that the man is in jeo-
 pardy Of the constable or the sheriff. But the nation is badly off if in addi- tion to this there is not a very much
 higher standard of conduct, standard
 impossible effectively to establish by statute, but one upon which the com
 munity as a whole, and especially the
 real leaders of the community, insist.
 Take such a question as the enforce ment of the law. It is. of course, ele-
 mentary to say that this is the first re- quisite In any civilization at ali. But a great many people in the ranks of life xxyl,i1h nnilaoa drawn seem to forget that they should condemn with equal severity those men who break the law by committing
 crimes of mob violence, and those who
 evade the law, or who actually break t, but so cunningly that they can not be discovered, the crimes they commit being not those of physical outrage, but
 those of greed and graft on the largest
 scale. The very rich man who con , duets his business as if he believed that he were a law unto himself, thereby | immensely increases the difficulty of the task of upholding order when the disorder Is menace to men of proper ty; for if the community feels that rich \ men disregard the law where it affects themselves, then tke community is apt l to assume the daL gerous and unWhole- some attitude of combining crimes of violence committed against the inter
 ests which in the popular mind these ! rich men represent. ThIs last attitude 1 is wholly evil; but so is the attitude which produces :t We have a right to appeal to the alumni O. Harvard, and \ to the alumni of every insLitntion' of 1 learning in this land to do their part l in creating a public stntnliert w ..,~.t shali demand of ali men Of means, and especially oE tue men of vast fortune, l that they set ah example to their less 1 fortunate brethren, by paying scrilpu- lous heed not only to the letter, bat to
 the spirit of the laws, and by acknoWl- l edging in tie heartiest fashion the
 moral obligations which can not be ex-
 pressed in law. but which stand back
 of and above all laws. It is far more l important that they should conduct their business affairs decently than that they should spend the surplus of 1 their fortunes in philanthropy. Much 1 has bsen given to these men and we
 have d right to demand much of them 1 in return. Every man of great wealth l who runs his business with cynical
 contempt for those prohibitions of the l law which by hired cunning he can es- cape or evade. is q nenace to our conf
 munity; and the community is not to be
 excused if it does not develop q spirit which actively frowns on and discoun- 1 tenances him. The great profession of l the law should be that whose members ] ought to take the lead in the creation
 of just such a spirit. We all know
 that, as things actually are. many of l the most influential and most highly
 remunera;ed members of the bar in 1 every center of wealth make it their
 special task to work out bold and in-
 genious schemes by which their very wealthy clients, individual or. corpo-
 rate, can evade the laws which are made to regulate in the interest of the | public the use of great wealth. Now, 1 the great lawyer who employs his tal-
 ent and his learning in the highly re-
 munerative task of enabling a very
 wealthy client to override or circum-
 vent the law is doing all that in him lies i to encourage the growth in this coun- try of a spirit of dumb anger against
 all laws and of disbelief in their effica- cy. Such spirit may breed the ds-
 mand that laws shall be made even
 more drastic against the rich, or else 1t 1 may manifest itself in hostility to all | laws. Surely Harvard has the right to l expect from her sons a high standard
 of applied morality. whether their
 paths lead them into public life, into l business, or into the great profession of
 the law. whose members are so potent
 in shaping the growth of the national 1 soul. 4 l But in addition to having high ideals
 it can not too often be said to body
 such as is gathered here to-day, that 1 together with devotion to what is right
 must go practical efficiency in striving
 for what is right. This is a. rough,
 workaday. practical world. and if in 1t
 we are to do the work best worth do-
 ing. we must approach that work in a
 spirit remote from that of the mere
 visionary. and. above all, remote from that of the visionary whose aspirations
 after good find expression only in the | shape of scolding and complaining. II | shall not help us if we avoid the scylla
 of baseness of motive, only to be
 wrecked on the Charybdis of wrong | lao IoEl a,e O.. l.