Politics differs from philanthropy in this:  that in philanthropy we sometimes do things through pity merely, while in politics we act always, if we are righteous men, on grounds of justice and large expediency for men in the mass.  Sometimes in our pitiful sympathy with our fellow-men we must do things that are more than just.  We must forgive men.  We must help men who have gone wrong.  We must sometimes help men who have gone criminally wrong.  But the law does not forgive.  It is its duty to equalize conditions, to make the path of right the path of safety and advantage, to see that every man has a fair chance to live and to serve himself, to see that injustice and wrong are not wrought upon any.

We ought not to permit passion to enter into our thoughts or our hearts in this great matter; we ought not to allow ourselves to be governed by resentment or any kind of evil feeling, but we ought, nevertheless, to realize the seriousness of our situation.  That seriousness consists, singularly enough, not in the malevolence of the men who preside over our industrial life, but in their genius and in their honest thinking.  These men believe that the prosperity of the United States is not safe unless it is in their keeping.  If they were dishonest, we might put them out of business by law; since most of them are honest, we can put them out of business only by making it impossible for them to realize their genuine convictions.  I am not afraid of a knave.  I am not afraid of a rascal.  I am afraid of a strong man who is wrong, and whose wrong thinking can be impressed upon other persons by his own force of character and force of speech.  If God had only arranged it that all the men who are wrong were rascals, we could put them out of business very easily, because they would give themselves away sooner or later; but God has made our task heavier than that,—­he has made some good men who think wrong.  We cannot fight them because they are bad, but because they are wrong.  We must overcome them by a better force, the genial, the splendid, the permanent force of a better reason.

The reason that America was set up was that she might be different from all the nations of the world in this:  that the strong could not put the weak to the wall, that the strong could not prevent the weak from entering the race.  America stands for opportunity.  America stands for a free field and no favor.  America stands for a government responsive to the interests of all.  And until America recovers those ideals in practice, she will not have the right to hold her head high again amidst the nations as she used to hold it.

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