Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1905-07-14
AN ADDRESS BY
THE PRESIDENT
Speaks at Ocean Grove Today
To National Educators.
A SPEECH WORTH SAVING.


Convention, now in session at Ocean
Grove.
He was given the closest attention
and his speech cordially cheered.
He said:
1 am glad to have the chance of
greeting the National Educational
Association; for IN all this democratic
land there is no more genuinely dem
ocratic association than this. 1t is
truly democratic, because here each
member meets every other member as
his peer without regard to whether he
is the president of one of the great
universities OF the newest recruit to
that high and honorable profession
which has in its charge the up-bring
ing and training of those boys and
girls who in a few short years will
themselves be settling the destinies
of this nation. You teachers make
the whole world your debtor. More
over, as an incident to yoIr avowed
work, you render some well-nigh I'M
beheVSble. services to the country.
For instance, you render to the
republic the prime, the vital service
of amalgam ating into one homogeneous
bopy the children alike of those who
are born here and of those who come
here from so many different lands
abroad.
Moreover, where altogether too
much prominence is given to the mere
possession of wealth, the country is
under. heavy obligations 20 such
body as this, which substitutes for
the ideal of accommodating money the
infinitely 1oftier, nonmaterialistic ideal
of devotion to work worth doing
simply for that works sake.
To furnish in your lives such.
realized high ideal is to do a great
service to the country. The chief
harm done by the men of swollen
fortune to the community is not the
harm that the demagogue 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 example for the rest of US. If we
did not ourselves attach an exagger-
ated Importance to the rich man who
is distinguished only by his riches,
this man would have over
most Insignificant influence
US. 1t is generally our own
fault if he does damage to US, for he
damages US chiefly by arousing our
envy or by rendering US sour and dis
rcontented. In his actual business
relations he is much more apt to
benefit than harm the rest of US; and
though it is eminently right to take
whatever steps are necessary in order
to prevent the exceptional members
of his 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 its manifestations takes the
shape of cringing servility. toward
wealth, and in another the shape of
brutal arrogance on the part of GER
tain 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 fan
|.tastically twisted and exaggerated
idea of the Importance of wealth as
compared to other things. The
clamor of the demagogue against
wealth, the snobhery of the social
columns of the newspapers 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 superb