CHAPTER IV 



PHANTOM SWITCHING, FALSE BALANCES 



BLESSED be investigation. Lexowing and 

 muckraking, much despised at the time, 

 have been the salvation of this country. 

 Nothing helps a bad situation so much as 

 some good competent X-raying. We can 

 have perfect confidence in it for the reason 

 that this is essentially a moral nation; a fact 

 constantly overlooked by foreign visitors 

 and native cynics, but always in emergencies 

 shining forth to confound both. To right 

 any wrong in the United States is, after all, 

 a simple process. You have only to exhibit 

 it where all the people can see it plainly; and 

 to that end a most gracious means is the 

 investigating committee of Congress or of 

 a legislature, providing it is on the level and 

 not more interested in hiding things than in 

 uncovering them. There was never yet a 

 notable muckraking by any such committee 

 that did not result in good. 



At an investigation in 1913 of grain ex- 

 changes by a committee of the Minnesota 



64 



