Dishonest America

Dishonest America Winning M-Men's Address, Delivered by Melvin Hyde Ridges at the M. I. A. Conference, Sunday, June 9, 1929 AWELL-G ROOMED American was playing at solitaire. After a few moments it seemed that he was stuck, beaten by the cards. He hesitated, glanced about the room as though fearing detec- tion, then, slipping a card from under one of the piles, he played it on the board. He won the game. "Rather a measly form of cheating," I thought. It called to mind a remark made by a German professor who had been traveling in this country for some months. He said, "American Democracy cannot survive. The people do not do what they believe. They are not honest." Such a remark from one so well educated sur- prised me, but was dismissed from mind almost immediately. Last summer, on a local green, we discovered a lone gentleman playing golf. His ball was evidently ditched behind a sand bank. He swung viciously. The sand sprayed. Again he swung with the same result. Then, a bit sheepishly it seemed, he stooped, caught the ball, tossed it about fifty feet and recorded a score. The incident reminded me of our friend the solitaire player, and the German scholar who said, "Americans are not honest," and it hurt. But if we only cheated ourselves at solo golf and solitaire the German would never have made this remark. If we only cheated when alone, he would not have seen dishonesty cropping out in every phase of our national life. But he saw that the city of Chicago had more crime than the whole British nation. He had heard that a member of the Presidential Cabinet accepted bribes. He saw senators, governors, mayors and captains of industry throughout the Mf.lvin Hyde Ridges

828 IMPROVEMENT ERA Aug.. \9i9 land, — cheating. Had he looked a bit closer he might have seen the dog catchers. He saw it in our politics. He saw it in our social life. He knew there were Americans who voted for prohibition who would not refrain from drink, and so he said, "Americans do not do what they believe. American Democracy cannot survive." He knew that no nation could maintain a desirable civilization unless the people practice self-control. That is why he said, "American Democracy cannot survive." This germ which we see at work on the green and in the draw- ing room has infected our business, as we may see by the petty squibs we tell in our advertisements. A certain cigarette, we are told, will make us athletic, healthy, trim, and handsome. A given brand of chewing gum will cleanse our teeth, remedy our digestive ailments, and even lengthen the span of our lives. On the strength of a newspaper advertisement a woman recently purchased some reducing pills. They worked wonders. Astounded at her marvelous loss of weight, she had the pills examined. They were nothing more than sugar-coated tape-worm heads, which grew within her body to malignant parasites to sap her vitality and eventually take her life. Yet someone thought this was good business. Who has never purchased an all-wool suit to find that there was not a wisp of wool in it? Who has never seen ten gallons of gas poured into a nine-gallon tank? Who ihas never paid the price of potatoes for the grocer's hand that weighed them? These are ten- dencies which are becoming altogether too common in our business today. Our politics, our social life, and our business are all infected. Shall we call it a moral epidemic? We justly look to the college for hope. There we build our dreams of tomorrow. There we are moulding leaders who are both trained and capable. But if you walk into the examination room of any average American university, you may see students stealing forbidden glances at concealed notebooks. Some will be turning pages with their feet, while from the sleeves of others cards are slipped out and in, which give clandestine assistance to the reader. If you happen into the examination room where a true-false test is being given, you will hear mysteriously muffled taps, coughs and scuffles which tell the students whether to answer "yes" or "no." I have seen students sell each other well-marked laboratory manuals and notebooks which are guaranteed to give satisfaction. There are in existence boarding houses where ponies to certain

Aug., 1929 DISHONEST AMERICA 829 courses are systematically filed. Above all, a fellow in a certain de- partment of a Western university actually sold keys to an examina- tion, the papers of which he himself corrected. If we expect clever leaders tomorrow we shall have them. I see coming from these class rooms tomorrow's presidents, senators and teachers. These astute students of today will enforce to- morrow's prohibition laws. They will grant our oil leases. They will teach our children. This germ which has infected our society, corrupted our politics, and dishonored our schools baffles both the wit and the will of science. No microscope can find it nor measure compass it. Athletic and intelligent policemen and restrictive laws alike are powerless to cope with it. What shall we do? Will the America that routed the hookworm and banished malaria bow to such a plague? The America that wove a few thousand miles of rails and telegraph wires and a mere few millions of people into .a nation, are her dreams to be wasted now? How will the America that made popular education a fact solve this problem? I know of only one time in history when this question has been adequately answered. That was in a crime-riddled China, twenty- four hundred years ago. A man by the name of Confucius was made governor of an important city. He made so marvelous a change in the manners and morals of the people that he was ap- pointed minister of justice. After a short while, historians tell us, there was no need to put the penal laws into action in his province, as there were no criminals to be found. If we were to ask this sagacious Chinaman how to solve the problem of dishonesty in our country today, he would say, "If you desire an honest nation, you must first rectify your state; before you rectify your state, you must clean up your city; before you cleanse your city, you must have an honest family, and you cannot have an honest family unless you think true thoughts and put them into action unfailingly yourself." Clearly, then, our problem is one of individual will. What America needs to do is to put to work again the will that turned the greatest offensive of all time into a frantic retreat at Cantigny, Belleau Wood, and the Argonne Forest. That will that flung our navies across the seas to say, "La Fayette, we are here," must help us in this crisis. That will which pushed the handcarts across the plains; the will that drove the iron horse through the mountains; that will that made of thirteen squabbling colonies the greatest nation the world has ever seen cannot, it must not, fail us now,