Over a century ago Washington  laid  the corner-stone of the Capitol in what was 
then little more than a tract  of  wooded wilderness here beside the Potomac. We 
now find it necessary to provide  great additional buildings for the business of 
the government. This growth in the need for the housing of the government is but 
a proof and example of the way  in which  the nation has grown and the sphere of 
action of the National Government has grown.  We now administer the affairs of a 
nation in which the  extraordinary  growth of population has been outstripped by 
the growth of wealth and the growth in complex interests.

The  material  problems  that  face  us  to-day  are  not  such  as they were in 
Washington's time,  but the underlying facts of human nature are the same now as 
they were then.  Under  altered  external  form  we war with the same tendencies 
toward evil that were  evident in Washington's time,  and are helped by the same 
tendencies for good.

It is  about  some  of  these  that I  wish  to  say a word to-day.  In Bunyan's 
"Pilgrim's Progress"  you  may  recall  the  description  of  the  Man  with the 
Muck-rake, the man who could look no way but downward, with the muck-rake in his 
hand; who was offered a celestial crown for his muck-rake, but who would neither 
look up nor regard the  crown  he was offered,  but continued to rake to himself 
the filth of the floor.

In "Pilgrim's Progress" the Man with the  Muck-rake  is set forth as the example 
of him whose vision is  fixed on  carnal instead of on spiritual things.  Yet he 
also typifies the man who in this life consistently refuses to see aught that is 
lofty,  and fixes his eyes with solemn intentness only on that which is vile and 
debasing.  Now,  it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what 
is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor and it must be scraped up with 
the muck-rake;  and there are  times and  places where  this service is the most 
needed  of all the services  that can be performed.  But the man who  never does 
anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes,  save of his feats with the 
muck-rake,  speedily becomes,  not a help to society, not an incitement to good, 
but one of the most potent forces for evil.

There are,  in the body politic,  economic and social, many and grave evils, and 
there is  urgent  necessity  for  the  sternest  war upon them.  There should be 
relentless exposure of  and  attack  upon  every  evil man whether politician or 
business man,  every  evil practice,  whether  in politics,  in business,  or in 
social life.  I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker,  every man who, on 
the platform, or in book, magazine,  or newspaper, with merciless severity makes 
such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of 
use only  if  it  is  absolutely  truthful.  The liar is no whit better than the 
thief, and if his mendacity takes the form of slander, he may be worse than most
 thieves.  It puts a premium  upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, 
 or even  with hysterical  exaggeration  to  assail  a bad man  with untruth. An 
 epidemic of indiscriminate assault upon character does not good, but very great 
 harm.  The soul of every  scoundrel  is  gladdened  whenever  an  honest man is 
 assailed, or even when a scoundrel is untruthfully assailed.

Now,  it is easy to twist out of shape what I have just said,  easy to affect to 
misunderstand it, and, if it is slurred over in repetition, not difficult really 
to misunderstand it.  Some persons are sincerely incapable of understanding that 
to denounce mud-slinging does not mean the endorsement of whitewashing; and both 
the interested individuals who need whitewashing,  and those others who practice 
mud-slinging, like to encourage such confusion of ideas. One of the chief counts 
against those  who  make  indiscriminate assault  upon men in business or men in 
public life,  is that they invite a reaction which is sure to tell powerfully in 
favor of the unscrupulous  scoundrel who really ought to be attacked,  who ought 
to  be exposed,  who ought,  if  possible,  to be  put in  the  penitentiary. If 
Aristides is  praised  overmuch  as just,  people get  tired of  hearing it; and 
overcensure of  the  unjust  finally  and  from similar reasons results in their 
favor.

Any excess  is  almost  sure  to  invite  a  reaction;  and,  unfortunately, the 
reaction,  instead  of  taking  the  form  of  punishment of those guilty of the 
excess, is very apt to  take the form either of punishment of the unoffending or 
of giving  immunity,  and  even  strength,  to  offenders.  The  effort  to make 
financial or  political  profit  out  of  the  destruction of character can only 
result in public calamity.  Gross and reckless assaults on character, whether on 
the stump or in newspaper, magazine, or book, create a morbid and vicious public 
sentiment,  and at  the same time  act as a  profound deterrent  to able  men of 
normal sensitiveness and  tend  to prevent them from entering the public service 
at any price.

As an instance in point,  I may mention that  one serious difficulty encountered 
in getting the right  type  of men to dig the Panama Canal is the certainty that 
they will be exposed,  both without,  and,  I am sorry to say, sometimes within, 
Congress, to utterly reckless assaults on their character and capacity.

At the risk of repetition let me say again that my plea is,  not for immunity to 
but for the most  unsparing exposure of the politician who betrays his trust, of 
the big business man who  makes or spends his fortune in illegitimate or corrupt 
ways.  There  should be  a resolute  effort to  hunt every  such man  out of the 
position  he has  disgraced.  Expose the crime,  and hunt down the criminal; but 
remember that  even  in  the  case  of crime,  if it is attacked in sensational, 
lurid, and untruthful fashion,  the attack may do more damage to the public mind 
than the crime itself.  It is because I feel that there should be no rest in the 
endless war against the forces of evil that I ask that the war be conducted with 
sanity as well as with resolution.

The men  with  the  muck-rakes  are  often  indispensable  to the  well-being of 
society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck,  and to look upward 
to the celestial crown above them, to the crown of worthy endeavor.

There are beautiful things above and roundabout them; and if they gradually grow 
to feel that the  whole world is nothing but muck,  their power of usefulness is 
gone.  If the whole picture  is  painted black  there  remains no hue whereby to 
single out the rascals for distinction from their fellows. Such painting finally
induces a kind of moral  color-blindness;  and people affected by it come to the 
conclusion that no man is really black, and no man is really white, but they are 
all gray.  In other words,  they neither believe in the truth of the attack, nor 
in the  honesty  of  the man  who is attacked;  they grow  as  suspicious of the 
accusation as of the offense;  it becomes well-nigh hopeless to stir them either 
to wrath  against  wrong-doing or to  enthusiasm for  what is right;  and such a 
mental  attitude in the public  gives hope to every knave, and is the despair of 
honest men.

To assail the great and admitted evils of our political and industrial life with 
such crude and sweeping generalizations  as to include decent men in the general 
condemnation means the searing of the public conscience. There results a general 
attitude either of  cynical belief  in and  indifference to public corruption or 
else of a distrustful  inability to  discriminate between  the good and the bad. 
Either attitude is fraught  with untold  damage to  the country  as a whole. The 
fool who has not  sense to discriminate  between what is good and what is bad is 
well-nigh as dangerous as the man who does discriminate and yet chooses the bad. 
There is nothing more distressing to every good patriot, to every good American, 
than the hard,  scoffing  spirit which  treats the allegation of dishonesty in a 
public man as a cause for laughter.

Such laughter is worse than the  crackling of thorns under a pot, for it denotes 
not merely  the vacant  mind,  but the heart  in which  high emotions  have been 
choked before they could grow to fruition.

There is  any amount  of good  in the  world,  and there  never was  a time when 
loftier and more disinterested work for the betterment of mankind was being done 
than now.  The forces that tend  for evil are great and terrible, but the forces 
of truth and  love and  courage and honesty and generosity and sympathy are also 
stronger than  ever before.  It is a foolish  and timid,  no less than a wicked, 
thing to blink the fact that the forces of evil are strong, but it is even worse 
to fail to take into account the strength of the forces that tell for good.

Hysterical  sensationalism  is the  very poorest  weapon  wherewith to fight for 
lasting righteousness. The men who with stern sobriety and truth assail the many 
evils of our time, whether in the public press or in magazines, or in books, are 
the leaders and allies  of all  engaged  in the  work for  social and  political 
betterment. But if they give good reason for distrust of what they say,  if they 
chill the  ardor of those who  demand  truth as a  primary virtue,  they thereby 
betray the good cause, and play into the hands of the very men against whom they 
are nominally at war.

In his "Ecclesiastical Polity" that fine old Elizabethan divine,  Bishop Hooker, 
wrote:  "He that goeth about to  persuade a multitude  that they are not so well 
governed as they ought to be,  shall never want attentive and favorable hearers; 
because  they  know  the manifold  defects  whereunto every  kind of  regimen is 
subject,  but the secret lets and difficulties,  which in public proceedings are 
innumerable and inevitable,  they have not ordinarily the judgment to consider."

This truth should be kept  constantly in mind  by every free people  desiring to 
preserve the sanity  and poise  indispensable  to the permanent success of self-
government.  Yet,  on the other hand,  it is vital not  to permit this spirit to 
sanity and self-command to degenerate into mere mental stagnation.  Bad though a 
state of hysterical  excitement is,  and evil though  the results are which come 
from the violent oscillations such excitement invariably produces,  yet a sodden 
acquiescence in evil is even worse.

At  this  moment  we are  passing  through  a  period  of  great  unrest-social, 
political, and industrial unrest.  It is of the utmost importance for our future 
that this should prove to be not the unrest of mere rebelliousness against life, 
of mere dissatisfaction  with  the  inevitable inequality of conditions, but the 
unrest  of a  resolute  and  eager  ambition  to  secure  the  betterment of the 
individual and the nation. So far as  this  movement of agitation throughout the 
country takes the form  of a  fierce discontent with evil, of a determination to 
punish the authors of evil,  whether in industry or politics,  the feeling is to 
be heartily welcomed as a sign of healthy life.

If, on the other  hand,  it  turns  into  a  mere  crusade  of  appetite against 
appetite,  of a  contest between  the brutal greed  of the  "have-nots"  and the 
brutal greed of the "haves,"  then it has no significance for good, but only for 
evil.  If it  seeks to  establish a line of cleavage,  not along  the line which 
divides good men from bad,  but along  that other line,  running at right angles 
thereto,  which divides those who are well off from those who are less well off, 
then it will be fraught with immeasurable harm to the body politic.

We can no more and  no less afford  to condone  evil in  the man of capital than 
evil in the  man of no capital.  The wealthy man  who exults  because there is a 
failure of justice in the  effort to bring  some trust magnate to an account for 
his misdeeds  is as bad as,  and no worse than,  the so-called  labor leader who 
clamorously strives to excite a foul class feeling on behalf of some other labor 
leader who is implicated in murder.  One attitude is as bad as the other, and no 
worse; in each case the  accused is  entitled  to exact justice;  and in neither 
case is there need of action by others which can be construed into an expression 
of sympathy for crime.

It is a prime necessity that  if the  present unrest  is to result  in permanent 
good the emotion shall  be translated into action,  and that the action shall be 
marked by honesty, sanity,  and self-restraint. There is mighty little good in a 
mere spasm of reform. The reform that counts is that which comes through steady, 
continuous growth; violent emotionalism leads to exhaustion.

It is important to this  people to grapple  with the problems connected with the 
amassing of enormous fortunes, and the use of those fortunes, both corporate and 
individual,  in business.  We should  discriminate in  the sharpest  way between 
fortunes well-won  and fortunes ill-won;  between those gained as an incident to 
performing great services to the community as a whole,  and those gained in evil 
fashion by keeping just within the limits of mere law-honesty.

Of course no amount of charity in  spending such fortunes in any way compensates 
for misconduct  in making them.  As a matter of personal conviction, and without 
pretending to discuss the details or formulate the system,  I feel that we shall 
ultimately have to consider  the  adoption  of  some  such  scheme  as that of a 
progressive tax on all fortunes, beyond a certain amount either given in life or 
devised or bequeathed upon death  to any individual-a tax so framed as to put it 
out of the power of the owner of  one of these enormous fortunes to hand on more 
than a certain amount to any one individual;  the tax, of course,  to be imposed 
by the National and not the State Government.

Such  taxation  should,  of  course,  be  aimed  merely  at  the  inheritance or 
transmission in their  entirety  of  those  fortunes  swollen beyond all healthy 
limits.  Again,  the National Government  must in some form exercise supervision 
over corporations engaged in  interstate business-and all large corporations are 
engaged in interstate business-whether by license or otherwise,  so as to permit 
us to deal with the far-reaching evils of overcapitalization.

This year we are making a beginning in the direction of serious effort to settle 
some  of  these  economic   problems  by   the  railway-rate  legislation.  Such 
legislation,  if so framed,  as I am sure it will be,  as to secure definite and 
tangible results,  will amount  to something of itself;  and it will amount to a 
great deal more in  so far as it is taken  as a first step in the direction of a 
policy  of  superintendence   and  control  over  corporate  wealth  engaged  in 
interstate commerce,  this superintendence  and control not to be exercised in a 
spirit of malevolence  toward the men who have created the wealth,  but with the 
firm purpose both to do  justice to them and to see  that they  in their turn do 
justice to the public at large.

The first requisite  in the  public servants  who are to deal in this shape with 
corporations, whether as legislators or as executives,  is honesty. This honesty 
can  be no  respecter  of  persons.  There  can  be  no such thing as unilateral 
honesty. The danger is not really from corrupt corporations; it springs from the 
corruption itself, whether exercised for or against corporations.

The eighth commandment reads:  "Thou shalt not steal."  It does not read:  "Thou 
shalt not steal from the rich man." It does not read: "Thou shalt not steal from 
the poor man." It reads simply and plainly: "Thou shalt not steal."

No good whatever will come  from  that  warped and mock morality which denounces 
the misdeeds of  men  of  wealth  and  forgets  the  misdeeds practiced at their 
expense;  which denounces bribery,  but blinds itself to blackmail;  which foams 
with rage if a  corporation secures favors by improper methods, and merely leers 
with hideous mirth if the corporation is itself wronged. The only public servant 
who  can be trusted honestly  to protect  the rights of  the public  against the 
misdeeds of a corporation is that public man who will just as surely protect the 
corporation itself from wrongful aggression.

If a public man is willing to yield to popular clamor and do wrong to the men of 
wealth  or  to rich  corporations,  it may  be set down  as certain  that if the 
opportunity comes  he  will secretly and furtively do wrong to the public in the 
interest of a corporation.

But,  in addition to  honesty,  we need  sanity. No honesty will make public man 
useful if  that  man is  timid or foolish,  if he is a  hot-headed  zealot or an 
impracticable visionary.

As we strive for reform we  find that it is not at all merely the case of a long 
up-hill pull.  On the contrary,  there is almost as much of breeching work as of 
collar work;  to depend  only on traces  means that there will soon be a runaway 
and an upset.

The men of wealth who today are  trying to prevent the regulation and control of 
their  business  in  the  interest  of  the  public  by  the  proper  government 
authorities will not succeed,  in my judgment,  in checking  the progress of the 
movement.  But if they did  succeed they would  find that they had sown the wind 
and  would  surely reap  the whirlwind,  for they  would ultimately  provoke the 
violent excesses  which accompany  a reform  coming by  convulsion instead of by 
steady and natural growth.

On the  other  hand,  the  wild  preachers of  unrest and  discontent,  the wild 
agitators against the entire existing order,  the men who act crookedly, whether 
because of  sinister design or from mere  puzzle-headedness,  the men who preach 
destruction without proposing any substitute for what they intend to destroy, or 
who propose a substitute which  would be  far worse  than the existing evils-all 
these men are the most dangerous opponents of real reform. If they get their way 
they will lead the people  into a deeper pit than any into which they could fall 
under the  present system.  If they fail  to get their  way they  will  still do 
incalculable harm by provoking the kind of reaction which, in its revolt against 
the senseless evil of their teaching, would enthrone more securely than ever the 
very evils which their misguided followers believe they are attacking.

More important then  aught else  is the  development of the broadest sympathy of 
man for man.  The welfare  of the wage-worker,  the welfare of the tiller of the 
soil, upon these depend the  welfare of the entire country; their good is not to 
be sought in pulling down others; but their good must be the prime object of all 
our statesmanship.

Materially we must strive  to secure a broader economic opportunity for all men, 
so that each  shall have a  better chance to show the stuff of which he is made.

Spiritually and ethically  we must strive to bring  about clean living and right 
thinking.  We appreciate also that the things  of the soul are immeasurably more 
important.

The foundation-stone of national life is,  and ever must be, the high individual 
character of the average citizen.

- "The Man With the Muck-rake" by Theodore Roosevelt. April 14, 1906.