The Denison review. [volume] (Denison, Iowa) 1867-current, 1906-04-19

his trust, of the big business men who
makes or spends his fortune in lille
gitimate or corrupt ways. There
should be resolute effort to hunt
every such man out Of the position
he has disgraced. Expose the crime
and hunt down the criminal; but re-
member that even in the case of
crime, if tits attacked in sensational,
lurid and .untruthful fashion the at
tack may do more damage to the
public mind than the crime itself. 1t
is because l feel that there should be
no rest in the endless war against the
forces of evil that will ask that the
war be conducted with sanity as we'll
as with resolution. The men with
the muck -rakes are often indispensa-
BILE to the we'll being of society; but
only if they know when to stop rak-
ing the muck and to look upward to
the celestial crown above them, to the
crown of worthy endeavor. There are
beautiful things above and around
them; and if they gradually grow to
feel that the whole world is nothing
but muck, their power of usefulness
is gone. If the whole picture is paint
ed black there remains no hue where
by to single out the rascals for dis
function from their fellows. Such
painting finally induces kind of NOR
al color-blindness; and people affected
by it come to the conclusion that no
man is really black, and no man really
white, but they are all gray. In
other words, they neither believe in
the truth of the attack, nor in the
honesty of he man who is attacked !;
they grow as suspicious of the accusa-
tion as of the offenses it becomes we'll
nigh hopeless to stir them eihter to
wrath against wrongdoing or to en-
thusiasm for what is right ;, and such
a mental attitude in the public gives
hope to every knave, and is the des-
pair of honest men.
CyniciSm Despair Of Reformers.
To assail the great and admitted
evils of our political and Industrial
life with such crude and sweeping
concentrations as to include decent
men in the general condemnation
means the soaring of the public con.
science. There results general at
titude either of cynical belief in ane
Indifference to public corruption o,
else of a distrustful inability to dis
criminate between the good and the
bad. Either attitude is frought will
untold damage to the country as ;
whole. The fool who has not sens
to discriminate between what i
good and what is bad is well-nigh a
dangerous as the man who does dis
criminate and yet chooses the bad
} There is nothing more distressing t
evrey good patriot, to every goo
! American, than the hard, scoffin.
| spirit which treats the allegation O
dishonesty in a public man as a caus
for laughter. Such laughter is wors
| than the cracking of thorns under
pot, for it denotes not merely the va
cant mind, but the heart in whic
high emotions have been choked befor
they could grow to fruition.
Many Working for Good
"There is any amount of good i
the world, and there never was tim
when loftier and more disintereste
work for the betterment of mankin
, was being done than now. The force
$ that tend for evil are great and ter
: rible, but the forces of truth and Low
2 and courage and honesty and gene1
osity and sympathy are also stronge
than ever before. It is a foolisl
and timid, no less than a wicke
2 thing, to blink the fact that the for
es of evil are strong, but it is eve
? worse to fail to take into account tn
! strength of the forces that tell TO
good. Hysterical sensationalism j
the very poorest weapon wnerewitl
: to fight for lasting Righteousness
t The men who with stern sobriety an
e truth assail the many evils of GU
time, whether in the public press, 0
t in magazines, or i'll books, are tn
leaders and allies of all engaged il
2 the work for social and political bet
$ terment. But if they give good rea
2 son for distrust of what they say,
they chill the ardor of those who dc
n mand truth as a primary virtue, the
/. thereby betray the good cause, an
play into the hands of the very me
: against whom they are nominally 3
war.
e ''In his Ecclesiastical Polity tina
! T. IL