Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 69, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 May 1907 — SIGNIFICANT SENTENCES BY THE PRESIDENT. [ARTICLE]

SIGNIFICANT SENTENCES BY THE PRESIDENT.

The world has moved so far that it is no longer necessary to believe that one nation can rise only by "thrusting another down. i This is an era of combination alike in the world of capital_ and in the world of labor. Each kind of combination can do good; and yet each, however powerful, must be opposed when it does ill. The greatest problem before us is to exercise such control over the business use of vast wealth—individual, but especially corporate—as will insure its not being used against the interests of the public, while yet permitting ample legitimate profits as will encourage individual initiative. The wrongdoer, the man who swmdles and cheats, whether on a big scale or a little one. shall receive at our hands mercy as scant as if he committed crimes of violence or brutality. It is our business to put a stop to abuses and to prevent their recurrence without showing a spirit of vindictiveness for what has been done in the past. Quoting from Burke: “If I cannot reform with equity, I will not reform at all. There is a state to preserve as well as a state to reform.” This is the exact spirit in which this country should move to the reform of abuses of corporate wealth. We are unalterably determined to prevent wrongdoing in the future; we have no intention of trying to wreak such indiscriminate vengeance for wrongs done in the past as would confound the innocent with the guilty. Our purpose is to build up rather than to tear down.