The morning journal-courier., 1908-12-09

mItted against men of property or by men of no property Is exactly as
 evil as corrupty to defend the wrong
 doing of men of wealth, The war we
 wage must be wagcd against mlscon- duct against wrongdoing wherever lt is found, and we must stand heartily for the rights of every decent man, whether he be a man of great wealth or man who earns his livelihood as
 a wage worker or tller of the soil II is to the Interest of all of us that
 there should be a premium put upon individual initiative and individual ca pacity, and an ample reward for the
 great directing iutclligenccs alone competent to manage the great busI-
 ness operations of to-day, It Is well
 to keep in mind that exactly as the
 anarchist is the worst enemy of liher- ty and the reactonary the worst ene- my of order, SO the men who defend the rights of property have most to
 fear from the Wrongdoers of great wealth, and the men who are cham
 plonlng popular rights have most to fear from the dCmagogues who In the
 name of popular rights would do wrong to and oppress honest business men, honest men of wealth; for the
 success of either type of wronGdoer
 necessarily Invites a violent reaction
 against the cause of the wronEdoor
 nominally upholds, In point of dan ger to the nation there is nothing to choose between on the one hand the
 corruptonlst, the bribe-giver, the | bribe-taker, the man who employs his
 great talent to swindle his fellow citizens on q large scale, and,on the
 other hand, the preacher of class hatred, the man who, whether from | ignorance or from willingness to sac- rfice his country to his ambition, per
 suades well-mcaning but wrong head 1 ed men to try to destroy the instru-
 ments upon which our prosperity
 mainly rests. Let each group of men
 beware of and guard against the short
 comings to which that group is it. self most liable. Too often we sec
 the business community In spirit Of unhealthy class consciousness deplore
 the effort to hold to account under the | law the wealthy men who in their
 management of great corporations.
 whether railroads, street railways. or
 other industrial enterprises, have be- l haved in a way that revolts the con-
 science of the plain, decent people.
 Such an attitude cannot he condemned of tV
 should recognize that they jcopardize
 the rights of property when they fail l heartily 10 join In the effort to do
 away with the abuses Of wealth. on | the other hand. those who advocate 1 proper control on behalf of the pub
 He, through the state of these great 1 corporations and of the wealth en- gagged ma giant scale in business op- | erations, must ever keep in mind that unless they do scrupulous justice to 1 the corporation, unless they permit
 ample profit, and cordially encourage i capable men of business so long as l they act with honesty, they arc strlk- 1 ing at the root of our national we'll 1 being; for in the long run, under the mere pressure of material distress, the
 people as a whole would probably go
 back to the reign of an unrestricted
 individualism rather than submit to
 control by the state SO drastic and
 so foolish conceived In spirit of | such unreasonable and narrow hostil- 1 ity to wealth, as to prevent business
 operations from being profitable, and
 therefore to bring ruin upon the cn-
 tire business community and ulti-