process sketched above will be carried to completion. If it were
it could not long survive. Oligarchies are notoriously unstable
compounds. No matter how secure they may make themselves from internal
dissension, their very power and success provoke to attack from the
outside. In the case we have assumed the weak point lies in the
unavoidable necessity of securing a majority of the popular vote from
time to time. Ultimately the oligarchy would have to become strong
enough to disregard this necessity; that is, to throw off the mask
of democracy by abolishing popular elections. Long before this point
could be reached, however, the ruling clique would probably find itself
attacked by organisations of great voting power which would demand a
share of the spoils of sovereignty for themselves. Reduce all politics
to a mere calculation of profit and even those voters who now sell
themselves for a few dollars or a few petty political favours would
come to realise that they held their ballots at too low a figure. They
would see political privileges based on their venal compliance or
connivance become the foundation stones of large fortunes. They would
further realise that the capital value of such privileges was based
largely upon the profits extracted from their own pockets a penny at
a time and many times over by the high prices charged them for public
utility services. Under conditions approaching frank oligarchy, with
a political philosophy justifying such conditions, and with class
consciousness bred of them, it would seem inevitable that powerful
organisations, particularly of labourers or other industrial classes,
would be formed for the purpose of wresting valuable privileges from
the government. Instead of the low individual forms of corruption now
prevailing we would have other forms, higher because tinged with a
group character, but still corrupt because narrow interests would be
advanced to the detriment of the interests of the state as a whole.
Confronted with such difficulties the corrupt machine would no more
prevail to save oligarchy than it is now prevailing to save democracy.
Fortunately every sign of the times points against the development
of oligarchy, and such a struggle between it and strong class
organisations as has been suggested. The great mass of our people,
fully two-thirds of the entire voting population according to Professor
Commons’ estimate,[12] stands outside the sphere of such a conflict.
This powerful neutral influence may be depended upon to establish a
rude sort of fair play and to suppress any overweening attempt to make
the machinery of the state subservient to narrow interests. Moreover
public sentiment as expressed by both the great political parties is
setting strongly against special privilege. It was once an easy matter
for politicians to approve such a sentiment outwardly, while continuing
to deal with it practically merely as a glittering generality quite
devoid of any real significance. That decidedly equivocal manner of
meeting the situation will no longer serve, however. Regulation of
railroads, trusts, and insurance companies, tariff reform, reforms
of our governmental organisations, particularly state and municipal,
primary and ballot reforms, all these have passed into the arena
of practical politics and are dealt with as living issues by both
political parties. Mistakes will be made in all these lines, the
process of reform will be slow, but that we are on the right road,
and that in the end the grosser forms of corruption that disgrace and
disgust the present era will be eliminated there can be no doubt.
A very significant evolutionary argument on the subject of corruption
has been advanced by Professor Henry J. Ford,[13] and may finally be
taken up at this point, although it might also have been considered in
connection with the third apology. In Professor Ford’s opinion:
“Just as mediæval feudalism was a powerful agency in binding together
the masses of the people into the organic union from which the modern
state was evolved, so, too, our party feudalism performs a valuable
office by the way it establishes connections of interest among the
masses of the people. To view the case as a whole, we should contrast
the marked European tendency toward disintegration of government
through strife of classes and nationalities with the strong tendency
shown in this country toward national integration of all elements of
the population. Our despised politicians are probably to be credited
with what we call the wonderful assimilating capacity of American
institutions.”
That the contrast drawn by Mr. Ford between government in Europe and
the United States is true and enormously in our favour there can be
no doubt. Of course, historical conditions would have retarded or
prevented any similar unifying development in Europe, even if that
continent had been privileged to enjoy the ministrations of all the
most talented party workers of America. And in the United States
frontier conditions, the public school, the church, the labour union,
the press, and our democratic political creed — for none of which
the ordinary politician is directly to be credited—have all worked
effectively toward the establishment of “connections of interest among
the masses of the people.” But the fact remains that the party worker
has played his part, and that it was a very important part indeed in
the process. Of course, his motives were largely selfish—personal or
party success; and his methods not of the cleanest—direct purchase of
votes, petty favours, minor offices for leading representatives of the
class or nationality whose votes were desired and so on. At any rate
the party worker met the immigrant with open arms, while too many of
our educated and propertied people sneered at or ignored him. Let us
suppose that the latter attitude had prevailed, and that the despised
foreigner had been kept from the polls either by legal means or by
other repressive measures. In defence of such procedure it could have
been argued that the purity of American institutions was at stake.
The slogan “America for Americans,” once so potent in our politics,
might have prevailed universally. At the same time our Know-nothing
rulers and people might have asserted that they were protecting and
cherishing with paternal unselfishness the best interests of the
foreign population which, manifestly, was unfit for the exercise of
political rights on its own behalf. Clearly by following this policy
some of the political evils which have been attributed so frequently to
the foreign vote could have been prevented. If immigrants were freely
permitted to come to America while all this was going on we should,
however, have had in time to reckon with a large class of unfranchised
labourers who could hardly have failed to look upon native Americans as
poor professors of democracy, or possibly even as oppressors against
whom insurrection was fully justified. Immigrants would not have become
citizens, America would not have shown the assimilative capacity which
is the wonder and despair of Europe.
Things were not so ordered. Immigrants were permitted to come in
staggering numbers, and once in the country were admitted to the
ballot with a light-hearted ease that seemed sheer insanity to
many observers. The corrupt politician improved the opportunity and
marshalled them to the polls in droves, often to the loudly expressed
disgust of the native born. Every method of coercion, deceit, and
corruption, was employed to keep the foreigner in the ranks. But this
policy was foredoomed to failure from the start. In his native country
the immigrant was either ignored or else kicked and cuffed about by
those in authority; imagine his surprise at being courted for his
political influence in the land of his adoption. The few dollars or few
petty favours at first offered him for his vote may have been a very
despicable method of acquainting him with the value of his political
rights, but the lesson had the merit at least of being adapted to every
grade of intelligence, including the lowest. Good government tracts on
the duties of citizenship would hardly have proved so effective. On
the whole it would be hard to imagine a worse school for citizenship,
and the only wonder is that in the end it has turned out so many good
citizens. A large part of the foreign vote has learned to repudiate the
leadership of designing native politicians. It has developed leaders
and aims of its own. Many of these leaders are doubtless quite as
purely selfish as the former American leaders, and many of the aims
pursued are not so high as they should be, but the political capacity
to reach higher things is there; and that, after all, is the main
consideration.[14] It would be easy to find fault on much the same
grounds with the political ideals and leaders of those parts of the
country which have been little if at all affected by immigration.
Believers in the ultimate good resulting from a questionable
evolutionary process might point in support of their faith to the
foregoing interpretation of the effects of our corrupt politics upon
the immigrant. Others will doubtless find it much too roseate. What
of those immigrants, they will ask, who were already fitted for the
proper performance of the duties of American citizenship? Doubtless
the number of such was large, particularly among our earlier accessions
from western Europe. Many of this better class of immigrants must have
been debauched by contact with corrupt influences, and even those who
rose superior to such conditions must have found it an uphill fight.
Even if instances can be cited where foreign masses subject to the
worst political management have nevertheless developed independence and
organisations of their own, it is seriously to be questioned whether
this development will continue. The new flood of immigration from
southern and eastern Europe may progressively deteriorate, or remain
a stumblingblock for a long time to come. There are some communities
of native white stock in the United States where the buying of votes
has continued through two or three generations, growing worse rather
than better, until at the present time it seems to have become a
fixed institution. In the opinion of many people a large part of the
negro vote is not only corrupt but incorrigibly so. Altogether the
facts are very far from warranting a reliance upon unaided evolution
to work out the problem of electoral corruption. Even granting that
the results already secured in this way are extremely favourable, it
is probable that much better results might have been secured had the
native American stock from the start lived up to the best ideals of
republican citizenship. The immigrant might, for example, have been met
and aided by institutions working unselfishly for his welfare, such as
the church, the school, or the social settlement, rather than by the
lowest grade of party politicians working largely for their own private
advantage. Doubtless this will sound like a counsel of perfection.
So it certainly is as regards the past, but none the less it would
seem our clear duty to take every care to educate properly for future
citizenship not only such foreigners as we shall continue to admit, but
also those of our own people who are exposed to corrupt influences.
To sum up the four lines of apology offered for political corruption,
it may be noted that only two of them are so commonly entertained at
the present time as to have any large practical significance. These
are the first and second, namely, that corruption makes business good,
and that it may be more than compensated for by the high efficiency
of those who engage in it. The two remaining arguments, dealing
respectively with the danger of mob rule and the possibly beneficent
effects of further evolution, are extremely interesting; but for the
present, at least, they belong largely to the realm of political
theory. No one is so simple as to imagine that such forms of corruption
as affect our political life owe their existence to any public benefit,
near or remote, which by any stretch of the imagination may be
attributed to them. Primarily they exist because they are immediately
profitable to certain persons who are unscrupulous enough to engage
in sinister and underhanded methods of manipulation. Philosophical
excuses are not thought out until later, when the magnitude and the
profitableness of the malpractices involved suggest the possibility
of an apparently dignified and worthy defence. Not one of the four
apologies we have considered stands the test of analysis. The social
advantages alleged to flow from political corruption are either
illusory or minimal. On the other hand the resultant evils are great
and real, although, no doubt, they have often been exaggerated by
sensational writers. Whether corruption be approached from the latter
side, as is commonly done, or from the side of its apologists, the
social necessity of working for its limitation is manifest.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “An Apology for Graft,” by Lincoln Steffens, _American Magazine_,
vol. lxvi (1908), p. 120.
[2] The argument is at least as old as Plato. In the “Laws” it is put
as follows: “Acquisitions which come from sources which are just and
unjust indifferently are more than double those which come from just
sources only.” With the true Greek contempt for business, however,
the Philosopher finds it an easy matter to dispose of this specious
contention. _Cf._ the “Laws,” bk. v, p. 125, tr. by B. Jowett, vol. v,
3d ed.
[3] “City Government in the United States,” ch. ix, p. 228.
[4] According to a newspaper report of October 16, 1909, the statue was
finally placed in its niche in the $13,000,000 Capitol at Harrisburg.
[5] This argument is presented in a very striking way in Mr. Hutchins
Hapgood’s “The Spirit of Labour,” pp. 114, 260, 345, 369.
[6] _Political Science Quarterly_, vol. xix (1904), p. 678.
[7] “The History of Tammany Hall,” by Gustavus Myers, p. 323.
[8] On this point _cf._ Mary E. Richmond’s extremely thoughtful and
sympathetic study of “The Good Neighbour in the Modern City.”
[9] Particularly chs. viii and ix.
[10] _Ibid._, p. 195.
[11] A discussion of these reforms in detail is given in ch. ix of
Professor Goodnow’s book.
[12] See his extremely able article entitled “Is Class Conflict in
America Growing and Is It Inevitable?” in the _American Journal of
Sociology_, vol. xiii (1908), p. 756.
[13] _Political Science Quarterly_, vol. xix (1904), p. 673.
[14] In his extremely interesting work on “The Anthracite Coal
Communities,” Mr. Peter Roberts takes a rather dark view of the
political morals of the coal counties of Pennsylvania (pp. 316-42,
355-58), but it is easy to recognise in his pages the emergence of
political independence and higher forms of corruption which indicate
better things for the future. “In the year 1897,” he writes, “the
courts of Lackawanna, Luzerne, and Schuylkill, drafted a new set of
rules to regulate the process of naturalising aliens, making it more
difficult and expensive.—[The cost alone was increased from $2.00 to
from $12.00 to $15.00, and applicants were compelled to engage the
services of an attorney.]—The Sclav in this matter, as in all others
which affect his material interests, moves in a practical manner that
commends his business tact and condemns his political ethics. The
applicants organise into political clubs, and prepare themselves for
the examination. When they are ready they wait for the time of election
until some aspirant for political honours comes round. A bargain is
then made; if he secures them their naturalisation papers the club
will vote for him. In this way a large number are pushed through,
previous to the elections, at little expense to themselves.—The first
lesson taught these men in the exercise of the franchise is that it is
property having market value, which they sell to the highest bidder.”
(pp. 44-45.)
“There are many brilliant young men rising among them [the Sclavs] who
cherish political ambition, and they successfully lead their fellow
countrymen to acquire the rights of citizenship in order to enhance
their prospects and power in both municipal and county politics. They
are gradually appropriating more and more of the spoils of office
in municipalities and their power in county elections is annually
increasing.”
“These people have both physical and intellectual qualities which will
enrich the blood and brain of the nation, but the political ethics
in vogue in our state are far from possessing a character likely to
strengthen and elevate the moral nature of the Sclav. His leaders teach
him cunning and give him samples of fraud and sharp practice which he
is quick to copy. Venality is the common sin of our electors and the
Sclav has been corrupted in the very inception of his political life in
his adopted country.” (pp. 47-48.)
THE NATURE OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION
II
THE NATURE OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION
In the whole vocabulary of politics it would be difficult to point
out any single term that is more frequently employed than the word
“corruption.” Party orators and writers, journalists, “muck rakers,”
and reformers all use it with the utmost freedom, and it occurs not
uncommonly in the less ephemeral pages of political philosophers and
historians. Transactions and conditions of very different kinds are
stigmatised in this way, in many cases doubtless with entire justice;
but apparently there is little disposition to inquire into the
essential nature of corruption itself and to discriminate in the use of
the word.
Detailed definitions of corrupt practices and bribery are, of course,
to be found in every highly developed legal code, but these are
scarcely broad enough to cover the whole concept as seen from the
viewpoint of political science or ethics. The sanctions of positive law
are applied only to those more flagrant practices which past experience
has shown to be so pernicious that sentiment has crystallised into
statutory prohibitions and adverse judicial decisions. Even within
this comparatively limited circle clearness and precision are but
imperfectly attained. Popular disgust is frequently expressed at the
ineptitude of the law’s definitions and the deviousness of the law’s
procedure, as a result of which prosecutions of notoriously delinquent
officials, politicians, and contractors so often and so ignominiously
fail in the courts. If once we step outside the circle of legality,
however, we find extremely confused, conflicting, and even unfair
states of moral opinion regarding corruption. Public anger at some
exposed villainy of this sort is apt to be both blind and exacting.
Reform movements directed against corrupt abuses are no more free than
are regular political organisations from partisan misrepresentation
and partisan passion. With all their faults, however, it is largely
from such forces and movements that we must expect not only higher
standards of public morality, but also a clearer and more comprehensive
legislative and judicial treatment of corrupt practices in the future.
For this reason it would seem to be desirable, if possible, to
formulate some fairly definite concept of corruption, broader than the
purely legal view of the subject and applicable in a general way to the
protean forms which evil of this sort assumes in practice.
Certain verbal difficulties must first be cleared away. Chief among
these, perhaps, is the extreme levity with which the word is bandied
about. One word, indeed, is not sufficient, and a number of slang
equivalents and other variants must needs be pressed into service:
graft, boodle, rake-off, booty, loot, spoils, and so on. With all
due recognition of recent achievements in the way of gathering and
presenting evidence, it is lamentably apparent that charges of
corruption are still very frequently brought forward, by party men and
reformers alike, on slight grounds or no grounds at all, and also that
in many of these cases no intention exists of pushing either accusation
or defence to a point where a thorough threshing-out of the matter at
issue is possible. In “practical politics” insinuations of the blackest
character are made jestingly, and they are ignored or passed off with
a shrug or a smile, provided only that they be not of too pointed
or too personal a character. Very serious evils may follow reckless
mudslinging of this sort. Even if the charges are looked upon as the
natural and harmless exuberances of our current political warfare,
their constant repetition tends to blur the whole popular conception
of corruption. Insensibly the conviction gains ground that practices
which are asserted to be so common can scarcely be wholly bad, since
public life goes on without apparent change and private prosperity
seems unaffected. If, on the other hand, the current accusations
of corruption are to be taken at anything like their face value,
it becomes difficult to avoid the pessimism that sees nothing but
rottenness in our social arrangements and despairs of all constructive
reform with present materials.
A second verbal point that demands attention is the metaphorical
character of the word corruption. Even when it is distinctly qualified
as political or business or social corruption, the suggestion is subtly
conveyed of organic corruption and of everything vile and repugnant to
the physical senses which the latter implies. It need not be charged
that such implications are purposely cultivated: indeed they are so
obvious and common that their use by this time has become a matter of
habit. Witness in current writing the frequent juxtaposition of the
word corruption, used with reference to social phenomena, with such
words as slime, filth, sewage, stench, tainted, rottenness, gangrene,
pollution, and the frequent comparison of those who are supposed to
profit by such corruption to vultures, hyenas, jackals, and so on.
Side by side with the levity already criticised we accordingly find a
usage which, however exaggerated and rhetorical it may be, appears to
indicate a strong popular feeling against what are deemed to be corrupt
practices.
Escape from such confusion can hardly come from the accepted formulas
of the dictionaries. Their descriptions or periphrases of corruption
are in general much too broad for use in exact discussion. Bribery,
indeed, is defined with sufficient sharpness by the _Century
Dictionary_ as
“a gift or gratuity bestowed for the purpose of influencing the
action or conduct of the receiver; especially money or any valuable
consideration given or promised for the betrayal of a trust or the
corrupt performance of an allotted duty, as to a fiduciary agent, a
judge, legislator or other public officer, a witness, a voter, _etc._”
Corruption, however, is by no means synonymous with bribery. The latter
is narrower, more direct, less subtle. There can be no bribe-taker
without a bribe-giver, but corruption can and frequently does exist
even when there are no personal tempters or guilty confederates. A
legislator may be approached by a person interested in a certain
corporation and may be promised a definite reward for his favourable
vote on a measure clearly harmful to the public interest but calculated
to benefit the corporation concerned. If the bargain be consummated
it is unquestionably a case of bribery, and the action involved is
also corrupt. But, if current reports are to be believed, it sometimes
happens that legislators, acting wholly on their own initiative and
regardless of their duty to the state, vote favourably or unfavourably
on pending bills, endeavouring at the same time to profit financially
by their action, or by their knowledge of the resultant action of the
body to which they belong, by speculation in the open market. In the
latter instance they have not been approached by a personal tempter,
and the brokers whom they employ to buy or sell may be ignorant of
the motives or even of the identity of their patrons. Clearly this is
not bribery, but equally clearly it is corrupt. The distinction is
perhaps sufficiently important to justify the coinage of the term
“auto-corruption” to cover cases of the latter sort.[15] Corruption
in the widest sense of the term would then include both bribery and
auto-corruption, and may be defined as _the intentional misperformance
or neglect of a recognised duty, or the unwarranted exercise of
power,_[16] _with the motive of gaining some advantage more or less
directly personal_.