Personal History (WOMEN IN HISTORY)

by Katharine Graham

If we keep wages too low in some few areas where unions still let us do it or if we neglect decent working amenities as long as we can avoid the cost, we defend ourselves by muttering about our concern for stockholders. As though by announcing compassion for a relatively anonymous and absent group we can justify a lack of compassion for people we spend our working days with. If we are brutally careless about printing something that maligns the character of some concrete individual, we are apt to wave the abstract flag of freedom of speech in order to avoid the embarrassment of a concrete apology. If we are pressed even harder, we may salve our consciences by saying that after all there are libel laws. And as soon as we say that we redouble our efforts to make those laws as toothless as we possibly can. And if we are pressed really quite hard, we can finally shrug our shoulders and say, “Well, after all we have to live.” Then we can only hope no one will ask the ultimate question: “Why?” I certainly have been guilty of all those stupid actions—and a great many more stupid. And I suppose that more than a few of you have done as poorly. What I prefer to recall are those rare occasions when I have had some better sense of the meaning of what I am engaged in. In those moments I have realized that our problems are relatively simple and that some simple, ancient, moral precepts are often reliable business tools. In those moments I have been able to keep in mind that it really doe...