Convention—Conditions of r roguess. 
117 
The very numbers of farmers, and the nature of their stake in 
the prosperity of the entire community, fit them preeminently for 
a firm assertion of strictly equal legislation in behalf of all; and 
render it, at the same time, quite impossible for them successfully 
to betray the commonwealth. Farmers make most respectable 
honest men, but most foolish and ridiculous rascals. Sheep cannot 
hunt successfully with wolves, nor farmers wdth rapacious politi¬ 
cians. 1 say this with the most profound respect for the farmers; 
the same respect that I have for the honest man, who, in a clear¬ 
sighted way, loves truth, loves fair dealing, loves the common¬ 
wealth. 
I must, in my social morality, put the sentiment of honesty in 
high honor over against that cunning which, fox-like, is always 
lurking about, interested only in an exposed point for plunder; a 
cunning w^hich, when it becomes voluble in man, makes the dema¬ 
gogue and politician. 
Let me give you one test in our day of a demagogue, an indis¬ 
criminate outcry against capital and capitalists. A demagoge is 
one who seeks private ends and personal notoriety by a wicked or 
a blind attack on existing institutions and social sentiments. If 
capital, in any branch of it, is receiving undue legislative favors; 
if it is making a mischievous use of natural advantages even, it is 
certainly the right of every citizen to point out the fact and pro¬ 
pose the remed 3 ^ If we believe capital to require, in its use, special 
legislation, and we propose this legislation, our position is correct, 
though our theory may be false; but if, avowedly in behalf of pro¬ 
duction, we open an indiscriminate attack on capital, the chief in¬ 
strument of production, and on the laws and customs under which 
it operates, we are disorganizers and demagogues. We need more 
capital, not less capital; more rich men, and more well-to-do men, 
not fewer. It is a rabid heresy in industry which leads us to re¬ 
gard the acquisition of wealth as in some way wrong, and the use 
of capital open to suspicion. This notion has in it the taint of the 
■worst communism, and communism is the anarchy of industry. If 
a man has gotten his wealth dishonestly, either by private or public 
fraud; if he has won it in a line of business mischievous to the 
community, or handled in an aggressive, grasping way, these 
charges may be clearly made, and the guilt, if possible, be brought 
home to him; but to raise an angry cry against rich men as a class, 
