be willing to break it in many ways.
The law as construed by the Supreme Court is such that the business of
the country cannot be conducted without breaking it."

But let it be admitted that there are cases where abuses exist and where
methods of doing business that were harmless enough and even necessary
enough a few years ago are now working hardship upon the public as a
result of changed conditions. These abuses should be corrected; there is
no question about that, and they will be corrected either by violent
methods that will leave behind them a heritage of bitter resentments and
wrongs or by the way of a real statesmanship that will recognize only
facts and that will do justice by methods that are themselves just. For
a long time to come it must be the greatest of all problems confronting
the statesmanship of our day, a problem that must try our patience and
our capacity for self-government. Do not imagine that America stands
alone on this perilous path of reform. All the countries of civilization
stand in the same place. All are confronted with the same conflict
between new ideals and old methods, between the spirit of to-day and the
mechanism of yesterday. The problems of other countries arise from their
own peculiar conditions just as our problems arise from our conditions,
but their essence, their purport, is the same. And do not imagine that
there is any one solution that can be applied or that there is any
virtue in the sovereign cure-alls that are clamorously urged upon us
by demagogues and by reformers who are eager to reform everything and
everybody but themselves. There is no such panacea. It is to be found
neither in municipalization, nor nationalization, nor confiscation, nor
any of the nostrums advocated so wearisomely by sensation mongers. There
is indeed no hope for us except by laborious study of conditions and by
an infinitely cautious advance from point to point, so that there may
be no injustice, no concessions to prejudice, no incitements of class
feeling, no embittering of relations that should be cordial as between
citizens of the same republic, whose differences are infinitely small as
compared with the well-being of a great nation. Of all the dangers that
threaten the path of the reformer that of injustice is the greatest. It
is better even that abuses should continue for a time longer than that
they should be corrected by injustice and by the infliction of hardships
upon those who are wholl