26 American Ideals 



ing a college or endowing a church, which makes 

 those good people who are also foolish forget his 

 real iniquity. These men are equally careless of 

 the workingmen, whom they oppress, and of the 

 State, whose existence they imperil. There are not 

 very many of them, but there is a very great number 

 of men who approach more or less closely to the 

 type, and, just in so far as they do so approach, they 

 are curses to the country. The man who is con- 

 tent to let politics go from bad to worse, jesting 

 at the corruption of politicians, the man who is con- 

 tent to see the maladministration of justice without 

 an immediate and resolute effort to reform it, is 

 shirking his duty and is preparing the way for in- 

 finite woe in the future. Hard, brutal indifference 

 to the right, and an equally brutal shortsightedness 

 as to the inevitable results of corruption and injus- 

 tice, are baleful beyond measure; and yet they are 

 characteristic of a great many Americans who think 

 themselves perfectly respectable, and who are con- 

 sidered thriving, prosperous men by their easy-going 

 fellow-citizens. 



Another class, merging into this, and only less 

 dangerous, is that of the men whose ideals are pure- 

 ly material. These are the men who are willing to 

 go for good government when they think it will 

 pay, but who measure everything by the shop-till, 

 the people who are unable to appreciate any quality 

 that is not a mercantile commodity, who do not un- 

 derstand that a poet may do far more for a country 

 than the owner of a nail factory, who do not realize 



