In the Legislature the problems with which I dealt were mainly problems
of honesty and decency and of legislative and administrative efficiency.
They represented the effort, the wise, the vitally necessary effort, to
get efficient and honest government. But as yet I understood little of
the effort which was already beginning, for the most part under very bad
leadership, to secure a more genuine social and industrial justice. Nor
was I especially to blame for this. The good citizens I then knew best,
even when themselves men of limited means--men like my colleague Billy
O'Neill, and my backwoods friends Sewall and Dow--were no more awake
than I was to the changing needs the changing times were bringing.
Their outlook was as narrow as my own, and, within its limits, as
fundamentally sound.
I wish to dwell on the soundness of our outlook on life, even though as
yet it was not broad enough. We were no respecters of persons. Where our
vision was developed to a degree that enabled us to see crookedness, we
opposed it whether in great or small. As a matter of fact, we found that
it needed much more courage to stand up openly against labor men when
they were wrong than against capitalists when they were wrong.
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