sense of honor and truth and
probity. When you reach the business world--and many of you perhaps will
go into the great corporations that are now ceaselessly paraded before
you as wolves and as public enemies--you will find there the same kind
of human nature that you find here in college, the same estimation of
probity and of fair dealing. If you do mean or underhand things, you
will find that they are branded in the same way there as here. You will
find that manliness and integrity are the rule and not the exception,
and I will venture upon the prediction that when the time comes for you
to look back upon your career you will see that there has been a steady
improvement all along the line, just as those who are already able to
look backward find that there has been an improvement since their own
college days. But that will rest with yourselves, for the future is in
your own hands. It is for you, gentlemen, to see that moral and ethical
progress is unbroken.

Now let me say a word about the corporations of which we hear so much in
the newspapers and magazines and that are so persistently represented as
enemies of the community and as vampires that are sucking the
life-blood of the nation. I think there may be plenty of room here for
clarification of our views, and, indeed, we should all be better for it
if we could give more precision to our thinking and free ourselves from
the imputations that have been allowed to cluster around certain terms.
You may be sure that I am under no inclination to defend criminality or
wrong-doing or to deny their existence wherever they are actually to
be found. There are criminal corporations just as there are criminal
doctors, and lawyers, and clergymen. Wherever men are gathered together
there you will find a certain number who are disposed to seek their
personal advantage in reprehensible ways, but because some doctors and
some lawyers and some clergymen are criminals we do not attach an
imputation to their respective professions. We are content to say that
there are black sheep in every flock and so pass on. But the newspapers
and the magazines have seen fit to concentrate their attention upon
the criminal or the illegal acts of certain individuals who belong to
corporations and to explain those acts in a manner which often leads
their readers to assume that the acts are an essential part of
corporation business. As a result, the very word "corporation" has taken
on a sinister meanin