Among Reformers 41 



agreement; in the proper sense opportunism should 

 merely mean doing the best possible with actual 

 conditions as they exist. A compromise which re 

 sults in a half-step toward evil is all wrong, just as 

 the opportunist who saves himself for the moment 

 by adopting a policy which is fraught with future 

 disaster is all wrong; but no less wrong is the atti 

 tude of those who will not come to an agreement 

 through which, or will not follow the course by 

 which, it is alone possible to accomplish practical 

 results for good. 



These two attitudes, the attitude of deifying mere 

 efficiency, mere success, without regard to the moral 

 qualities lying behind it and the attitude of disre 

 garding efficiency, disregarding practical results, are 

 the Scylla and Charybdis between which every ear 

 nest reformer, every politician who desires to make 

 the name of his profession a term of honor instead 

 of shame, must steer. He must avoid both under 

 penalty of wreckage, and it avails him nothing to 

 have avoided one, if he founders on the other. Peo 

 ple are apt to speak as if in political life, public life, 

 it ought to be a mere case of striving upward 

 striving toward a high peak. The simile is inexact. 

 Every man who is striving to do good public work 

 is traveling along a ridge crest, with the gulf of 

 failure on each side the gulf of inefficiency on the 

 one side, the gulf of unrighteousness on the other. 



