It was not always easy to keep the just middle, especially when it happened that on one side there were corrupt and unscrupulous demagogues, and on the other side corrupt and unscrupulous reactionaries.  Our effort was to hold the scales even between both.  We tried to stand with the cause of righteousness even though its advocates were anything but righteous.  We endeavored to cut out the abuses of property, even though good men of property were misled into upholding those abuses.  We refused to be frightened into sanctioning improper assaults upon property, although we knew that the champions of property themselves did things that were wicked and corrupt.  We were as yet by no means as thoroughly awake as we ought to have been to the need of controlling big business and to the damage done by the combination of politics with big business.  In this matter I was not behind the rest of my friends; indeed, I was ahead of them, for no serious leader in political life then appreciated the prime need of grappling with these questions.  One partial reason—­not an excuse or a justification, but a partial reason—­for my slowness in grasping the importance of action in these matters was the corrupt and unattractive nature of so many of the men who championed popular reforms, their insincerity, and the folly of so many of the actions which they advocated.  Even at that date I had neither sympathy with nor admiration for the man who was merely a money king, and I did not regard the “money touch,” when divorced from other qualities, as entitling a man to either respect or consideration.  As recited above, we did on more than one occasion fight battles, in which we neither took nor gave quarter, against the most prominent and powerful financiers and financial interests of the day.  But most of the fights in which we were engaged were for pure honesty and decency, and they were more apt to be against that form of corruption which found its expression in demagogy than against that form of corruption which defended or advocated privilege.  Fundamentally, our fight was part of the eternal war against the Powers that Prey; and we cared not a whit in what rank of life these powers were found.

To play the demagogue for purposes of self-interest is a cardinal sin against the people in a democracy, exactly as to play the courtier for such purposes is a cardinal sin against the people under other forms of government.  A man who stays long in our American political life, if he has in his soul the generous desire to do effective service for great causes, inevitably grows to regard himself merely as one of many instruments, all of which it may be necessary to use, one at one time, one at another, in achieving the triumph of those causes; and whenever the usefulness of any one has been exhausted, it is to be thrown aside.  If such a man is wise, he will gladly do the thing that is next, when the time and the need come together, without asking what the future holds for him.  Let the half-god play his part well and manfully, and then be content to draw aside when the god appears.  Nor should he feel vain regrets that to another it is given to render greater services and reap a greater reward.  Let it be enough for him that he too has served, and that by doing well he has prepared the way for the other man who can do better.