[293:1] "He stands for the commonplace virtues; he is great along lines on which each one of us can be great if he wills and dares" (_Theodore Roosevelt, the Man and Citizen_, by Jacob A. Riis). Mr. Roosevelt has spoken of himself as "a very ordinary man." A pleasant story is told by Mr. Riis of the lady who said: "I have always wanted to make Roosevelt out a hero, but somehow, every time he did something that seemed really great, it turned out, upon looking at it closely, that it was only just the right thing to do." [296:1] See his _Addresses and Presidential Messages_, with an introduction by Henry Cabot Lodge (Putnams, 1904). [303:1] To those who would understand the negro question and the mistakes of the people of the North during the Reconstruction period (to which the present generation owes the legacy of the problem in its acute form) I commend the reading of Mr. James Ford Rhodes's _History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the Restoration of Home Rule in the South in 1877_ (Macmillan). CHAPTER XII COMMERCIAL MORALITY Are Americans more Honest than Englishmen?--An American Peerage--Senators and other Aristocrats--Trade and the British Upper Classes--Two Views of a Business Career--America's Wild Oats--The Packing House Scandals--"American Methods" in Business--A Countryman and Some Eggs--A New Dog--The Morals of British Peers--A Contract of Mutual Confidence--Embalmed Beef, Re-mounts, and War Stores--The Yellow Press and Mr. Hearst-- American View of the House of Lords. It would seem to be inevitable that any general diffusion of corruption in political circles should act deleteriously on the morals of the whole community. It will therefore seem almost absurd to Englishmen to question whether on the whole the code of commercial ethics in America--the standard of morals which prevails in the every-day transaction of business--is higher or lower than that which prevails in Great Britain. The answer must be almost a matter of course. But, setting aside any expression of individual opinion and all preconceived ideas based on personal experience, let us look at the situation and see, if we can, what, judging only from the circumstances of the two countries, would be likely to be the relative conditions evolved in each. To do this it will be necessary first to clear away a common misapprehension in the minds of Englishmen.