334 Presidential Addresses 



standpoint. Capitalist and wage-worker alike should 

 honestly endeavor each to look at any matter from 

 the other's standpoint, with a freedom on the one 

 hand from the contemptible arrogance which looks 

 down upon the man of less means, and on the other, 

 from the no less contemptible envy, jealousy and 

 rancor, which hates another because he is better off. 

 Each quality is the supplement of the other, and in 

 point of baseness there is not the weight of a finger 

 to choose between them. Look at the report signed 

 by those men ; look at it in the spirit in which they 

 wrote it, and if you can only make yourselves, make 

 this community, approach the problems of to-day 

 in the spirit that those men, your fellows, showed 

 in approaching the problem of yesterday, your prob 

 lems will be solved. 



Any man who tries to excite class hatred, sectional 

 hate, hate of creeds, any kind of hatred in our com 

 munity, though he may affect to do it in the interest 

 of the class he is addressing, is in the long run 

 with absolute certainty that class's own worst en 

 emy. In the long run, and as a whole, we are going 

 to go up or go down together. Of course there will 

 be individual exceptions, small, local exceptions, 

 exceptions in kind, exceptions in place; but as a 

 whole, if the commonwealth prospers some measure 

 of prosperity comes to all of us. If it is not pros 

 perous, then the adversity, though it may fall un 

 equally upon us, will weigh more or less upon all. 

 It lies with us .ourselves to determine our own fate. 

 I can not too often say that the wisest law, the best 



