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actly as yours is to-day. Here is where our work must begin ; 

 here is where we must make strong the glorious beginnings I 

 have but recited. If the past century in State, Church and civi- 

 lization was one of growth, one of foundation and one of estab- 

 lishment, so must the coming century be one of expansion and 

 of achievement. If our fathers could do so much with such 

 slender materials, what ought we not do with the wealth of 

 mental, educational and material development which we have 

 at hand? 



To-day all around us we have examples of the undue power 

 and enormous aggregations of wealth, on the one hand, and 

 the threatened overturn of society and confiscation of the 

 sources of that wealth, on the other. The gradual mo- 

 nopoly of the necessaries of life, of the means of transporta- 

 tion, of even the means of the diffusion of knowledge, threatens 

 our national life and liberties. On the other hand, a rising tide 

 of discontent against capital and wealth finds its most outspoken 

 advocates in socialism and threatens not only our government, 

 as presently constituted, but the very principles of order upon 

 which it is founded. In their cry for economic and social re- 

 form, these advocates would go so far as to destroy the old 

 landmarks of civilization — religion, the family, and clean liv- 

 ing. We cannot afford to yield either to the pressure of the 

 one or to the demands of the other. If progress is to be made, 

 it must be made along the lines of reconciliation. 



When we studied in boyhood our elementary catechism, we 

 learned as primary truths the commands, "Thou shalt not steal" 

 and "Thou shalt not covet," and that among the sins which cry 

 to heaven for vengeance are oppression of the poor and de- 

 frauding laborers of their wage. On these may be built the 

 entire economic and political theory of the modern State. All 

 the material ills which cry for reform are but a variation of 

 these themes, or of the machinery by which they are exploited. 

 Those commands point the direction in which the cure must be 

 sought. 



There are no men in these United States upon whom the 

 task of making straight the tangled paths of human progress 

 should rest more than upon the college graduates. It is the 

 noblest aim they can have in life. The entry of large-minded 

 college men, who know their Faith and love their country, into 



