Speech 54
FALSE STANDARDS RESULTING FROM SWOLLEN FORTUNES

FROM AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, IN OCEAN GROVE, NEW JERSEY, JULY J, 1905

WHERE altogether too much prominence is given to the mere possession of wealth, the country is under heavy obligations to such a body as this which substitutes for the ideal of accumulating money the infinitely loftier, none materialistic ideal of devotion to work worth doing simply for that work's sake.  I do not in the least underestimate the need of having material prosperity as the basis of our civilization, but I most earnestly insist that if our civilization does not build a lofty superstructure on this basis, we can never rank among the really great peoples.  A certain amount of money is of course a necessary thing, as much for the Nation as for the individual; and there are few movements in which I more thoroughly believe than in the movement to secure better remuneration for our teachers.  But, after all, the service you render is incalculable, because of the very fact that by your lives you show that you believe ideals to be worth sacrifice, and that you are splendidly eager to do non-remunerative work if this work is of good to your fellow-men.

To furnish in your lives such a realized high ideal is to do a great service to the country.  The chief harm done by the men of swollen fortune to the community is not the harm that the demagogue is apt to depict as springing from their actions, but the fact that their success sets up a false standard, and so serves as a bad example for the rest of us.  If we do not ourselves attach an exaggerated importance to the rich man who is distinguished only by his riches, this rich man would have a most insignificant influence over us.  It is generally our own fault if he does damage to us, for he damages us chiefly by arousing our envy or by rendering us sour and discontented.  In his actual business relations he is much more apt to benefit than harm the rest of us; and though it is eminently right to take whatever steps are necessary in order to prevent the exceptional members of his class from doing harm, it is wicked folly to let ourselves be drawn into any attack upon the man of wealth merely as such.  Moreover, such an attack is in itself an exceptionally crooked and ugly tribute to wealth, and therefore the proof of an exceptionally ugly and crooked state of mind in the man making the attack.  Venomous envy of wealth is simply another form of the spirit which in one of its manifestations takes the shape of cringing servility toward wealth, and in another the shape of brutal arrogance on the part of certain men of wealth.  Each one of these states of mind, whether it be hatred, servility, or arrogance, is in reality closely akin to the other two; for each of them springs from a fantastically twisted and exaggerated idea of the importance of wealth as compared to other things.  The clamor of the demagogue against wealth, the snobbery of the social columns of the newspapers which deal with the doings of the wealthy, and the misconduct of those men of wealth who act with brutal disregard of the rights of others, seem superficially to have no fundamental relation; yet in reality they spring from shortcomings which are fundamentally the same; and one of these shortcomings is the failure to have proper ideals.

This failure must be remedied in large part by the actions of you and your fellow teachers, your fellow-educators throughout this land.  By your lives, no less than by your teachings, you show that while you regard wealth as a good thing, you regard other things as still better.  It is absolutely necessary to earn a certain amount of money; it is a man's first duty to those dependent upon him to earn enough for their support; but after a certain point has been reached money making can never stand on the same plane with other and nobler forms of effort.  The roll of American worthies numbers men like Washington and Lincoln, Grant and Farragut, Hawthorne and Poe, Fulton and Morse, St.  Gaudens and MacMonnies; it numbers statesmen and soldiers, men of letters, artists, sculptors, men of science, inventors, explorers, roadmakers, bridge builders, philanthropists, moral leaders in great reforms ; it numbers men who have deserved well in any one of countless fields of activity; but of rich men it numbers only those who have used their riches aright, who have treated wealth not as an end, but as a means, who have shown good conduct in acquiring it and not merely lavish generosity in disposing of it.

Thrice fortunate are you to whom it is given to lead lives of resolute endeavor for the achievement of lofty ideals, and, furthermore, to instil, both by your lives and by your teachings, these ideals into the minds of those who in the next generation will, as the men and women of that generation, determine the position which this Nation will hold in the history of mankind.