The apologists of successful
dishonesty always declaim against any effort to punish or prevent it on
the ground that such effort will "unsettle business." It is they who by
their acts have unsettled business; and the very men raising this
cry spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in securing, by speech,
editorial, book or pamphlet, the defense by misstatement of what they
have done; and yet when we correct their misstatements by telling the
truth, they declaim against us for breaking silence, lest "values be
unsettled!" They have hurt honest business men, honest working men,
honest farmers; and now they clamor against the truth being told.
The keynote of all these attacks upon the effort to secure honesty in
business and in politics, is expressed in a recent speech, in which the
speaker stated that prosperity had been checked by the effort for the
"moral regeneration of the business world," an effort which he denounced
as "unnatural, unwarranted, and injurious" and for which he stated the
panic was the penalty. The morality of such a plea is precisely as great
as if made on behalf of the men caught in a gambling establishment when
that gambling establishment is raided by the police.
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