great many human diamonds which, a little while ago, were thought to be flawless brilliants of the first water, and which dazzled the financial and social world, when the microscope of official scrutiny was turned upon them, were found to contain great ugly flaws.
A United States senator, seventy years of age, was recently sentenced to serve a term in prison, besides paying a fine, for his connection with great land frauds. Still another senator and several representatives have been indicted for crooked work in connection with their exalted positions. Congressmen have been convicted of land frauds and army officers of peculation. The exposure of post-office contracts and the notorious “cotton statistics leak,” not long ago, showed that minor officials had sold themselves to manufacturers and Wall Street brokers.
Think of the men at the head of great public trusts juggling with sacred funds, not only taking for themselves, from the hard-earned savings of the poor, salaries two or three times as great as that of the President of the United States, but also giving enormous salaries to a large number of their relatives out of these same sacred funds of those who have struggled for years to make possible a better condition for those who should survive them! Think of their paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars for secret services of a suspicious nature, and using trust funds to effect stock manipulations for private gain!
Was there ever before such a shameful story spread before Americans? Were people ever before so mercilessly betrayed by men they looked up to, admired, and implicitly trusted? Never before has there been such colossal stealing carried on so brazenly and openly by men in high positions.
Some of these men, when they appeared in public a year ago, were applauded to the echo. Wherever they went they were followed by admiring crowds. Some months ago I saw one of them, a man who has been for many years a great public favorite, at a reception in the White House. He was pointed out by guests, and seemed to attract almost as much attention as the President himself. People seemed to regard it as a great honor to be introduced to him. Now he would hardly dare to appear before an audience for fear of being hissed.
What a humiliation for those whose names have been household words for a quarter of a century or more to be asked to withdraw from trusteeships or directorships in institutions which perhaps worked for years to secure these men, on account of their great influence, and high reputations.
What is there left worth living for when a man has lost the finest, the most sacred thing in him, and when he has forfeited the confidence and respect of his fellow men? Is there any quality which inheres in dollars that can compensate for such a loss? Is there any thing which ought to be held more precious than honor or more sacred than the esteem and confidence of friends and acquaintances?
The man who has nothing which he holds dearer than money or some material advantage is not a man. The brute has not been educated out of him. The abler a man and the more money he has, the more we despise him if he has gotten that money dishonestly, because of the tremendous contrast between what he has done and what he might have done.
What the world demands of you, whatever your career, whether you make money or lose it, whether you are rich or poor, is that you be a man. It is the man that gives value to achievement. You cannot afford success with a flaw in it. You cannot afford to have people say of you, “Mr. Blank has made money, but there is a stain on it. It is smirched. It has cost him too much. He exchanged his manhood for it.”
Every human being has it within his power to keep the foundation under him—his manhood—absolutely secure under all circumstances. Nothing can shake that but himself. The citadel can never be taken until he himself surrenders the keys. Calumny, detraction, slander, or monetary failure cannot touch this sacred thing.
Every man, whether in private or public life, should so carry himself before the world that he will show in his very face and manner that there is something within him not for sale—something so sacred that he would regard the slightest attempt to debauch it as an unpardonable insult. He should so carry himself that no one would even dare to suggest that he could be bought or bribed.
Who was so corrupt during the Civil War that he would have dared to attempt to bribe Abraham Lincoln? There was something in that face that would have cowed the hardest character. Who would be bold enough to presume to bribe our present President?
Many a one has failed because he was not a man before he was a merchant, or a lawyer, or a manufacturer, or a statesman—because character was not the dominating influence in his life. If you are not a man first—if there is not a man behind your book, behind your sermon, behind your law brief, or your business transaction—if you are not larger than the money you make, the world will expose and despise your pretense and discount your success; history will cover up your memory no matter how much money you may leave.
That is the lesson of the startling disclosures of late. These men whose reputations have melted away so rapidly—men who have had such a drop in the public regard—were not real men to start with. There were flaws in their character foundations, and the superstructures of their achievement have fallen before the flood of public indignation. Those criminals in high places are beginning to realize that no smartness, brilliancy, genius, scheming, long-headed cunning, bluffing, or pretense can take the place of manhood or be a substitute for personal integrity.
There are men in New York, to-day, whose names have been a power, who would give every dollar they have for a clean record—if they could wipe off all their underhanded, questionable methods from the slate and start anew; but there is no way to buy a good name. It is above riches, and beyond the price of rubies.
How many men there are, to-day, in high positions who are in perpetual terror lest something should happen to expose the real facts of their lives—something which would pierce their masks and reveal them in their true light. How must a man feel who is conscious that he is walking all the time on the thin crust of a volcano which is liable to open at any moment and swallow him?
There is one thing no money or influence can buy; that is, the heart’s approval of a wrong deed or a questionable transaction. It will be bobbing up all along the future to remind you of your theft, of your dishonesty, or of your unfair advantage. It will take the edge off your enjoyment. It will appear, like Banquo’s ghost, at every feast to which you sit down.
Methinks that some of the men who have been exposed recently must have had strange dreams and horrid nightmares during their sleep, when the ghosts of the poor people whom they have wronged appeared to them and haunted their rest Methinks they must have had strange visions as these sacred dollars intended for widows and orphans slipped through their fingers for luxuries and amusements—dollars which had been wrung out of the lives of those who trusted them.
What a pitiable picture those great financial giants made, under investigation in courts of inquiry, squirming, ducking, dodging, and resorting to all sorts of ingenuity to avoid telling the exact truth—to keep from uncovering their tracks or exposing their crooked methods!
No man has a right to put himself in a position where he has to cover up anything or where he must be afraid of the truth. Every man should live so that he can hold up his head, look his kind in the face without wincing, and defy the world.
A man went to President Roosevelt, before the last presidential election, and told him that someone had unearthed a letter of his which would be extremely damaging to his canvass were it made public, and that, with a little diplomacy, the damaging part of the letter could be suppressed. After listening to the man, the great President said, "I have never written a letter which I am afraid to have published. Let them print the letter, the whole of it. I have nothing to conceal. I am not afraid to face anything I have ever done.”
How many of our public men dare take that attitude?
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