A man is not bad because he is rich, nor good because he is poor.  There is no monopoly of virtue.  I hold no brief for the poor against the rich nor for the wage-earner against the capitalist.  Exceptional capacity in business, as in any other line of life, should meet with exceptional reward.  Rich men have served this country greatly.  Washington was a rich man.  But it is very clear that excessive profits from the control of natural resources, monopolized by a few, are not worth to this Nation the tremendous price they cost us.

We have allowed the great corporations to occupy with their own men the strategic points in business, in social, and in political life.  It is our fault more than theirs.  We have allowed it when we could have stopped it.  Too often we have seemed to forget that a man in public life can no more serve both the special interests and the people than he can serve God and Mammon.  There is no reason why the American people should not take into their hands again the full political power which is theirs by right, and which they exercised before the special interests began to nullify the will of the majority.  There are many men who believe, and who will always believe, in the divine right of money to rule.  With such men argument, compromise, or conciliation is useless or worse.  The only thing to do with them is to fight them and beat them.  It has been done, and it can be done again.

It is the honorable distinction of the Forest Service that it has been more constantly, more violently and more bitterly attacked by the representatives of the special interests in recent years than any other Government Bureau.  These attacks have increased in violence and bitterness just in proportion as the Service has offered effective opposition to predatory wealth.  The more successful the Forest Service has been in preventing land-grabbing and the absorption of water power by the special interests, the more ingenious, the more devious, and the more dangerous these attacks have become.  A favorite one is to assert that the Forest Service, in its zeal for the public welfare, has played ducks and drakes with the Acts of Congress.  The fact is, on the contrary, that the Service has had warrant of law for everything it has done.  Not once since it was created has any charge of illegality, despite the most searching investigation and the bitterest attack, ever led to reversal or reproof by either House of Congress or by any Congressional Committee.  Not once has the Forest Service been defeated or reversed as to any vital legal principle underlying its work in any court or administrative tribunal of last resort.  It is the first duty of a public officer to obey the law.  But it is his second duty, and a close second, to do everything the law will let him do for the public good, and not merely what the law directs or compels him to do.  Unless the public service is alive enough to serve the people with enthusiasm, there is very little to be said for it.