BUFFALO INDEPENDENT CLUB 317
born; the doctrine that teaches us that men shall prosper as long as
they do their duty to themselves and their neighbors alike; the doctrine
that we shall believe as long as we believe in those archaic rules of
conduct which were set down in the Sermon on the Mount.
The use and abuse of property. The use of it is to use it as any
honest man would use his property in reference to his brother. Its
abuse is to use it as any honest man would not use his property in
reference to his brother. All that the Legislature, all that our public
bodies, have to do is to see that our policy as a State, that the policy
of the Legislatures and the policy of the Nation is shaped along those
lines; that when a measure comes up in our State Legislature, it shall
be treated absolutely on its merits.
Each community has the kind of politicians that it deserves. Each
community is represented with absolute fidelity by the men whom it
chooses to have in public life. Those men represent its virtue or they
represent its vice, or, what is more common, they represent its gross
and culpable indifference; and gross and culpable indifference may, on
some occasions, be worse than any wickedness. Now, send men into
public life who, on the one hand, will be incapable of yielding to any
demagogic attack upon men of means, merely because they are men of
means, men who will realize how much this country owes to the
architects of its material prosperity, who will realize that every man in
legitimate business benefits not only himself, but benefits the whole
community in which he resides; and men who, on the other hand, will
not be blinded by those considerations to the fact that too many men
of means, too many successful men of business, strive to bring into
public life the kinds of chicanery by which