Arizona republican., 1905-07-08

developed minds and trained charac- ters. You teachers make the whole world your debtor. If you did not dc your work well this republic would not endure beyond the span of the gener- ation. Moreover, as an incident to your aVowed work, you render some welI-nigh unbelievable services to the country. For instance, you render to the republic the prime, the vital ser vice of amalgamating into one homo genOus body the children alike of those who are born here and of those who come here from so many different lands abroad. You furnish a common training and common ideals for the children of all the mixed peoples who are here being fused into one nation aIity. It is in no small degree due to you and your efforts that we are one people instead of a group of jarring peoples.
 Moreover where altogether too much prominence is given to the mere pos session of wealth, the country is un- der heavy obligations to such a body as this, which substitutes for the ideal of accommodating money the infinitely loftier, nonmaterialistic ideal of devO- tion to work worth doing. simply for works sake. I do not in the least underestimate the need of having ma teriaI prosperity as the basis of our civilization, but I most earnestly hi- sist that if our civilization does not build a lofty superstructure on this ba- sis, we can never rank among the really great peoples. A certain amount of money is of course a neces- sary thing, as much for the nation as for the individual; and there are few movements in which I more thorough ly believe than in the movement to secure better remuneration for our teachers. But. after all, the service you render is incalculable, because of the very fact that by your lives you show that you believe ideals to be worth sacrifice. and that you are splendidly eager to do nonremunera- tive work if this work is of good to your fellOW-men.
 To furnish in your lives such real ized high ideal is to do a great ser vice to the country. The chief harm done by the men of swollen fortune to the community is not the harm that the dema gogue is apt to depict as springing from their actions. but the fact that their success sets up a false standard. and so serves as a bad eX- ample for the rest of us. If we did not ourselves attach an exaggerated importance to the rich man who is distinguished only by his riches. this rich man would have most insignifi- cant influence over us It is generally our own fault if he does damage to us. for he damages us chiefly by arOus- ing our envy by rendering US sour and discontented. In his actual business relations he is much more apt to ben eft than harm the rest of us; and though it is eminently right to take whatever steps are necessary in or der to prevent the exceptional mem bers Of this class from doing harm it Is wicked folly to let ourselves be drawn into any attack upon the man of wealth merely as such. Moreover. such an attack is in itself an excep- tionally crooked and ugly tribute to wealth, and therefore the proof of an exceptionally ugly and crooked state of mind in the man making the attack. Venomous envy of wealth is simply another form of the spirit, which in one of it's manifestations sta,kes the shape of cringing servility toward wealth, and in another the shape of brutal arrogance on the part of certain men of wealth. Each one of these states of mind, whether it be hatred. servility. or arrogance, is in reality closely akin to the other two; for each of them springs from a fantastical1y twisted and exaggerated idea of the importance of wealth as compared to other things. The clamor of the dem agOgue against wealth. the snobbery of the social columns of the newspa- pers which deal with the doings of the wealthy, and the misconduct of those men of wealth who act with brutal disregard of the rights of others. seem superficially to have no fundamental relation; yet in reality they spring from shortcomings which are funda- mentally the same; and one of these shortcomings is the failure to have proper ideals.
 This failure must be remedied in