Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1906-04-23
The Man With the Muck Rake
President Roosevelt Tells In Ringing Words How
He Can Work Good or Evil
Clean Right Thinking Spiritually and
Ehcaly-war Strongly Urged If Conducted With
Sanity, Honesty and Restraint = Progressive Tax
Vast Fortunes Advocated o Their Inherit.
Transmission 10 Entirety

man out of the position he has dis
graced. Expose the crime and hunt
down the criminal, but remember that
even in the case of crime, if it is at
tackled in sensational, lurid and un-
truthful fashion, the attack may do
more damage to the public mind than
the crime itself. 1t is because | feel
that there should be no rest in the end
less war against the forces of evil that
| ask that the war be conducted with
sanity as well as with resolution. The
men with the muck rakes are often in
dispensable to the we'll being of Soci-
ETY., but only if they know when to
stop raking tie muck and to look up
ward to the celestial crown above
them, to the crown Of worthy endeav-
or. There are beautiful things above
and round about 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 painted black there remains
no hue whereby to single out the ras-
calls for distinction from their fellows.
Such painting finally induces kind of
moral color blindness, and people af-
fected 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
the man who is attacked. They grow as
suspicious of the accusation as of the
offense. 1t becomes well nigh hopeless
to stir them either to- wrath against
wrongdoing or to enthusiasm for what
is right. and such a mental attitude in
! the pu9lic gives hope to every knave
and is the despair of honest men.
Forces For Truth Stronger Than Ever.
| There is any amount of good in the
world, and there never was a time
when loftier and more disinterested
work for the betterment of mankind
was being done than now. The forces
that tend for evil are great and terri
BILE, but the forces of truth and love
and courage and honesty and gener-
osity and sympathy are also stronger
than ever before 1t Is a foolish and
|
blink the fact that the forces Of evil
are strong, but it is even worse to fail
to take into account the strength of the
forces that tell for good.
In his ecclesiastical polity that fine
old EliZabethan divine, Bishop Hooker,
wrote:
HE that goeth about to persuade a
= hot
governed as they ought to be shall
never want attentive and favorable
5. hearers. Because they know the man
fold defects whereunto every kind of
regimen is subject, but the secret lets
and difficulties, which in public pro-
ceedings are innumerable and inevita-
Die, they have not ordinarily the judg-
=, ment to consider"
This truth should be kept constantly
| in mind by every free people desiring
to preserve the sanity and pOise indis-
| pensable to the permanent success of
self government. Yet, on the other
hand, it is vital not to permit this
| spirit of sanity and self command to
degenerate into mere mental stagna
excitement is, and evil though the re-
suits are which come from the violent
oscillations such excitement invariably
produces, yet a sodden acquiescence
in evil is even worse. At this moment
we are passing through a period OF
great unrest-social, political and in
dustrial unrest. 1t is of the utmost
Importance for our future that this
should prove to be not the unrest OF
mere RIGHTEOUSNESS against life. OF
mere dissatisfaction with the inevita
bic inequality of conditions, but the
unrest of n resolute and eager ambi
ton to secure the betternent of the
individual and the nation. So far as
this movement of agitation through
out the country takes the form of 2
fierce discomfort with evil. of a deter
mination to punish the authors of evil
whether in industry or politics. the
feeling is to be heartily welcomed as &
sign of healthy life.
If, on the other hand, it turns into
mere crusade of appetite against appe
tite. of a contest between the bruta
tai greed of. the "haves." then it ha:
> no significance for good, but only 70,
evil If it seeks to establish a line O
cleavage, not along the line whicl
divides good men from bad, but along
that other line. running at right an
giles thereto, which divides those whC
are well off from those who are less
well off, then it will be fraught will
Unreasonable harm to the body poll
tic.
We can no more and no less afford
TO condone evil in the man of capital
than evil in the man of no capital
The wealthy man who exults- because
there is "a failure Of justice i'll the eff
fort to bring some trust magnate to ar
account for his misdeeds is as bad as
and no worse than the so called labor
leader who DANGEROUSLY strives to ex
cite. foul class feeling on behalf OF
some other labor leader who is impli