Gubernatorial Messages 773 



corporation tax offers another. In all these matters 

 of taxation, however, it is necessary to proceed with 

 extreme caution, the path never being so simple and 

 clear as the advocates of any particular measure in- 

 variably believe. Every wealthy corporation that 

 perpetrates or is allowed to perpetrate a wrong helps 

 to produce or inflame a condition of angry excite- 

 ment against all corporations, which in its turn may 

 in the end harm alike the honest and the dishonest 

 agents of public service and thereby do far-reaching 

 damage to the whole body politic. Much of the 

 outcry against wealth, against the men who acquire 

 wealth, and against the means by which it is ac- 

 quired, is blind, unreasoning and unjust; but in too 

 many cases it has a basis in real abuses ; and we must 

 remember that every act of misconduct which af- 

 fords any justification for this clamor is not only bad 

 because of the wrong done but also because the justi- 

 fication thus given inevitably strengthens movements 

 which are in reality profoundly anti-social and anti- 

 civic. Our laws should be so drawn as to protect 

 and encourage corporations which do their honest 

 duty by the public; and to discriminate sharply 

 against those organized in a spirit of mere greed, 

 or for improper speculative purposes. 



There is plenty of misconduct, plenty of selfish 

 disregard of the rights of others, and especially of 

 the weak. There is also plenty of honorable and 

 disinterested effort to prevent such misconduct or to 

 minimize its effects. Any rational attempt to pre- 

 vent or counteract the evils, by legislation or other- 



