The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-11-15
Friday, November 15, 1907.
M.R. MELLEN,S YIEH.

lens ability is not involved in the re- markable address he, delivered We'd nesday evening before the national
 grangers in session at Hartford. MT,
 Mellen's ability is looked upon AS a
 determined fact covering a period of many years, during which he has reached the creditable ambition of his
 life, the presidency of one of the
 greatest railroads in the country 9
 railroad in whose prosperous manage
 nlent Is involved the future industrial
 life of that large and heavily financed section of New England 1t serves. The point presented by MT. Mellen's Hart ford address is not that of his abstract ability but rather the concrete view of
 his Judgment as manifested upon that
 particular occasion.
 On the whole, it would have beep
 better for all concerned, especialIv those who while at heart adrnirinr the fascinating personality of President
 Roosevelt eagerly looked for an en- cotiragement of the influential forces which are calculated to establish in him a more orderly method of execu- tive conduct-we say that under all
 of the circumstances it would have
 been better had the MelIen speech been itself less Rooseveltian in pat- tern. Aside from the ever pressing ne- cessity for simple and truthful state ment, the present is the time to avoid exaggeration of every kind. To quote from MT. Mellens address, Tt has been said the pen is mightier than the sword Latterly events seemed to prove this with emphasis. That speech is silver and silence golden, when we have had more experience with the latter we shall know" It cannot be re- served for President Mellen to do all of the talking, though there is the suggestion in his address that he would make use of the powers of speech to better advantage. Without questioning the fact, the truth Is that altogether too much talk has been in- dulged in, beginning with the muck rakers, whom President Roosevelt re- buked, and coming down to the Pres ident himself and the writers for the press whom MT. Mellen in turn re- bukes. AS it has been the unbroken policy of The Journal and Courier to refrain from extravagant comment. either as it might affect the corpora tions of the country. the enterprise of the nauck-rakers, the ferocity of the government or the restlessness of the individual, it feels the right to mildly rebuke MT. Mellen for using extreme language when milder phrases would have done the work more effectively.
 Beginning with the second half of -A-A' N"ASAOH aoufeSS Cle redQer Will find so much that is impressive in its tone of intelligent warning that he will wonder the more why the first half should have been pnrased in a spirit of dictation and nervous criticism We much prefer to let the objection able half of the address lie unnoticed, as something that should never have been penned by the official head of a great corporation, in order to the more fully enjoy the wisdom of the half that should have constituted the complete address. President Mellen is right when he protests against the de- Btruction of all of the barns of the community because beneath one lies A skunk. He is everlastingly right in this contention: Tt is not right to damage and harass with suspicion a whole community because few have gone wrong, and you are entitled to be treated as above suspicion, unless indeed, under the dispensation recent ly so popular, the capacity to harbor @ nuisance or commit a crime is war rant for investigation" We agree, too. that the fever for trouble hunting has been abnormal, that the motives of those hunted as well as of those hunt ing have been confused by extreme angles of investigation and that final ly a mischievous condition of things has been created that might have been avoided by less self-centered meas ures of attack and resistance. We find ourselves in full sympathy with the Mellen doctrine that the founda- -tions of industry cannot be shaken without the smallest wage-earner suf- fering his full share of the conse- quences when they are finally distrib- uted. These and many other things which Mir Menen called attention to in the latter half of his address are so true that, like the golden rule, they