Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1907-10-04

classes and creeds. No other president
has ever more deserved to have his
life work characterized in Lincoln's
words as being carried on with NAL
Ice toward none, with charity toward
all" AS a boy he worked hard with
his hands; he entered the army as a
private soldier; he knew poverty; he
earned his own livelihood and by his
own exertions he finally rose to the
position of a man of moderate means.
Not merely was he in personal touch
with farmer and town dweller, with
capitalist and wageworker, but he felt
an intimate understanding of each,
and therefore an intimate sympathy
with each; and his consistent effort
was to try to judge all by the same
standard and to treat all with the
same justice. Arrogance toward the
weak, and envious hatred of those
we'll Off were equally abhorrent to his
just and gentle soul.
Surely this attitude of his should be
the attitude of all our people to-day
1t would be cruel disaster to this
country to permit ourselves to adopt
an attitude of hatred and envy toward
success worthily won, toward wealth
honestly acquired. Let us in this re-
spect profit by the example of the re-
publics of this Western Hemisphere
to the south of us. Some of these re-
publics have prospered greatly; but
there are certain ones that have
Jagged far behind that still continue
in a condition of material poverty, of
social and political unrest and confu-
sion. Without exception the republics
of the former class are those in which
honest industry has been assured of
reward and protection; those where
a cordial welcome has been extended
to the kind of enterprise which bene-
fits the whole country, while incident
ally, as is right and proper, giving SUBJ
Stantial rewards to those who mani
fest it, On the other hand, the Door
and backward republics, the repub-
lies in which the lot of the average
citizen is least desirable, and the lot
of the laboring man worst of all, are
precisely those republics in which in
dustry has been killed because wealth
exposed it's owner to spoilation. To
these communities foreign capital now
rarely comes, because it has been
found that as soon as capital is en-
ployed so as to give substantial re-
muneration to those supplying it, it
excites ignorant envy and hostility.
which result in such oppressive ac-
ton, with or without the law, as
sooner or later to work a virtual con-
fiscation. Every manifestation of
feeling of this kind in our civilization
should be crushed at the outset by the
weight of sensible public opinion.
From the standpoint of our ma.
terial prosperity there is only one
other thing as important as the dis
couragement of spirit of envy and
hostility toward honest business men.
toward honest men of means; this is
the discouragement of dishonest bust
ness men, the war upon the chicanery
and wrongdoing which are peculiarly
repulsive, peculiarly noXious, when ex-
hibited by men who have no excuse
of want, of poverty, of ignorance, for
their crimes. Men of means, and
above all men of great wealth, can
exist in safety under the peaceful pro.
lection of the state, only in orderly
societies, where liberty manifests 1t.
self through and under the law. 1t is
these men who, more than any others
should, in the interests of the class to
which they belong, in the interests OF
their children and their children's chill.
uren, seek III every way, out eSpecl
ally In the conduct of their lives, to
insist upon and to build up respect
for the law. 1t may not be true from
the standpoint of some particular indi,
vidual of this class, but in the long
run it is pre-eminently true from the
standpoint of the class as whole, nc
less than of the country as a whole
that 1t is veritable calamity to
achieve temporary triumph by VIC
lation or evasion of the law; and we