measure should be adopted at this session of the Congress relating to the employment of women and children in the District of Columbia and the Territories.  The investigation into the condition of women and children wage-earners recently authorized and directed by the Congress is now being carried on in the various States, and I recommend that the appropriation made last year for beginning this work be renewed, in order that we may have the thorough and comprehensive investigation which the subject demands.  The National Government has as an ultimate resort for control of child labor the use of the interstate commerce clause to prevent the products of child labor from entering into interstate commerce.  But before using this it ought certainly to enact model laws on the subject for the Territories under its own immediate control.

There is one fundamental proposition which can be laid down as regards all these matters, namely:  While honesty by itself will not solve the problem, yet the insistence upon honesty—­not merely technical honesty, but honesty in purpose and spirit—­is an essential element in arriving at a right conclusion.  Vice in its cruder and more archaic forms shocks everybody; but there is very urgent need that public opinion should be just as severe in condemnation of the vice which hides itself behind class or professional loyalty, or which denies that it is vice if it can escape conviction in the courts.  The public and the representatives of the public, the high officials, whether on the bench or in executive or legislative positions, need to remember that often the most dangerous criminals, so far as the life of the Nation is concerned, are not those who commit the crimes known to and condemned by the popular conscience for centuries, but those who commit crimes only rendered possible by the complex conditions of our modern industrial life.  It makes not a particle of difference whether these crimes are committed by a capitalist or by a laborer, by a leading banker or manufacturer or railroad man, or by a leading representative of a labor union.  Swindling in stocks, corrupting legislatures, making fortunes by the inflation of securities, by wrecking railroads, by destroying competitors through rebates—­these forms of wrongdoing in the capitalist, are far more infamous than any ordinary form of embezzlement or forgery; yet it is a matter of extreme difficulty to secure the punishment of the man most guilty of them, most responsible for them.  The business man who condones such conduct stands on a level with the labor man who deliberately supports a corrupt demagogue and agitator, whether head of a union or head of some municipality, because he is said to have “stood by the union.”  The members of the business community, the educators, or clergymen, who condone and encourage the first kind of wrongdoing, are no more dangerous to the community, but are morally even worse, than the labor men who are guilty of the second type of wrongdoing, because