more popular and, when applied to immature minds, more pernicious
than economics. To a very considerable degree the present peril of
socialism and other eccentricities of political creed is due to
the fact that so many young men are crammed with economical theory
(whether orthodox or not) when their minds have not been weighted with
the study of human nature in its larger aspects. From this lack of
balance they fall an easy prey to the fallacy that history is wholly
determined by economical conditions, or to the sophism of Rousseau
that the evil in society is essentially the result of property. The
very thoroughness of this training in economics is thus a danger.”[52]
The positions both of Mr. Ghent and of Mr. More are extreme. As for
the special ethics of the trading class, of which the former makes
so much, it is doubtful if anything exists more foreign to current
academic ideals. So marked is this aversion that it is distinctly
difficult for the ordinary professor to estimate correctly the real
value to the community of the service of the business man. That equal
difficulty exists on the other side is apparent from the openly
expressed conviction of many business men that the college teacher is
a thoroughly unpractical sort of person. The latter attitude, by the
way, is a most remarkable one for a client to assume toward his social
apologist,—taking Mr. Ghent’s view of the situation. A prisoner at the
bar who should rail at the abilities of his counsel is certainly not
putting himself in the way of acquittal. As for “moral weaklings,” no
profession can honestly deny the existence of some examples of this
pestiferous species in its ranks. If academic promotion depended upon
moral weakness, however, the bankruptcy of the profession would have
been announced long ago. As a matter of fact, the system of selection
and advancement employed by colleges is admirably adapted to their
requirements. In spite of the machinations of occasional cliques,
chiefly of a personal or churchly character, it usually succeeds
in placing the best prepared and most capable men in desirable and
influential positions. Certainly college administration as a whole
deserves the reputation of success which it enjoys, a reputation, by
the way, much superior to that of most of our governmental machinery.
If, for example, an equally effective system could be employed in the
selection of the administrative heads of American city governments it
is safe to say that many of our municipal problems would find a speedy
solution.
As between Mr. Ghent and Mr. More, the latter is much nearer the
truth in his main contention. It is hardly the case, however, as Mr.
More would seem to imply, that thorough training in economics is more
likely to produce half-baked agitators than is a mere smattering of the
subject. Here as elsewhere “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,”
and the students who afterwards run amuck in radicalism are drawn to
a very slight extent from the ranks of those who acquire a really
thorough knowledge of economics or the other social sciences. Without
recourse to the old classical discipline, as proposed by Mr. More,
the study of history and of the theory of evolution should furnish an
excellent corrective to the excessively _a priori_ processes employed
in some fields of economics. Apart from these exceptions Mr. More is
clearly right in maintaining that the net result of college instruction
in this subject is radical rather than reactionary. However, the
impress finally given to the overwhelming majority of college students
is not that of radicalism but rather that of willingness to work
patiently, constructively, and progressively for social betterment.
In either event the sweeping assertion that college teachers are the
hirelings of capitalistic conspirators finds little ground for support.
* * * * *
One who attempts a survey of the whole field of corruption is apt to
be impressed at first with its hopeless complexity and heterogeneity.
There are many petty forms of evil, the shady moral character of which
is as yet hardly perceived. The spirit thus revealed is, however,
identical with that which expresses itself in the major forms of
corruption which are so obvious and threatening that they have become
subject to public criticism. It cannot be denied that some abuses of
a grave character make their appearance in the learned professions,
journalism, and higher education. In all such cases, however, vigorous
reform work is in progress. A very gratifying feature of the situation
is that the most effective and sincere efforts for improvement are
being made from the inside. Our “men of light and leading” are sound
at heart. It is not necessary to prove to them, as unfortunately it
sometimes is to those in other walks of life, that corruption does
not pay. Rehabilitated by some of its more recent forms journalism
exercises an alert and resourceful influence upon the opinion of the
day. More hopeful still is the fact that our institutions of higher
learning are moulding both the men and the measures of to-morrow into
nobler forms.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] Corruption in the professions might also be dealt with as a
subdivision of economic corruption. All professional services, it
could be argued, must be remunerated, and the abuses which have grown
up in connection with them are the outgrowth of a commercial spirit
antagonistic to professional ideals. While this is doubtless true,
the persistence of the older ideals and the efforts to rehabilitate
and extend them are facts of sufficient importance, in the opinion of
the writer, to justify the separate treatment of corruption in the
professions. Even if this distinction did not exist convenience would
make a division of the fields for the purpose of discussion highly
desirable.
[41] _Cf._ G. W. Alger’s “Generosity and Corruption,” _Atlantic_, vol.
xcv (1905), p. 781.
[42] Even if it be sneered at in certain quarters as a mere counsel
of perfection, the following statement of the principles underlying
“the lawyer’s duty in its last analysis” is of great significance:—“No
client, corporate or individual, however powerful, nor any cause, civil
or political, however important, is entitled to receive, nor should
any lawyer render, any service or advice involving disloyalty to the
law whose ministers we are, or disrespect of the judicial office,
which we are bound to uphold, or corruption of any person or persons
exercising a public office or private trust, or deception or betrayal
of the public. When rendering any such improper service or advice, the
lawyer invites and merits stern and just condemnation. Correspondingly,
he advances the honour of his profession and the best interests of his
client when he renders service or gives advice tending to impress upon
the client and his undertaking exact compliance with the strictest
principles of moral law.” The “Canons of Professional Ethics,” adopted
by the American Bar Association at its thirty-first annual meeting at
Seattle, August 27, 1908, are conceived in the spirit of the foregoing,
taken from Canon 32. Canons 2, 3, 6, 26, 29, and 31 also declare
specifically and unqualifiedly against various forms of corruption.
[43] Quoted in Lester F. Ward’s “Pure Sociology,” p. 487. Professor
Ward himself says: “The newspaper is simply an organ of deception.
Every prominent newspaper is the defender of some interest and
everything it says is directly or indirectly (and most effective when
indirect) in support of that interest. There is no such thing at the
present time as a newspaper that defends a principle.”
[44] _Cf._ “Is an Honest Newspaper Possible,” by “A New York Editor,”
in the _Atlantic_, vol. cii (1908), p. 441.
[45] “Orations and Addresses,” vol. i, p. 303.
[46] “Journalism, Politics, and the University,” _North American
Review_, vol. clxxxvii (1908), p. 598.
[47] It is perhaps worth noting that the debatable subjects of to-day
are not those of a generation or so ago. Geology and biology were
then the dangerous chairs, the occupants of which frequently found
themselves in conflict with straight-laced followers of various
religious sects. Occasionally professors of philosophy and ethics
became involved in similar controversies. At the present time conflicts
of this character are much less frequent and are confined for the most
part to theological seminaries and those smaller colleges which are
still dominated by narrow denominational influences. Nearly all our
leading universities have so far emancipated themselves from sectarian
control that controversies with their professors on this basis are
virtually impossible. In such institutions the chairs which present
difficulties nowadays are those in economics, political science, and
sociology, although, as we shall see, these difficulties are greatly
exaggerated in popular estimation. It is hardly necessary to add that
(with the exception in some small measure of sociology) the area
of friction in these subjects is not at all in their contact with
religious, but almost exclusively in their contact with business and
political activities outside university walls.
[48] “Leviathan,” pt. ii, ch. xxx.
[49] _Cf._ his annual report for 1904-05, pp. 19-20, for a brief but
very interesting reference to the “tainted money” charge.
[50] “The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Third
Annual Report,” 1908, pp. 82-91.
[51] “Mass and Class,” pp. 14, 82, 83, 105, 243.
[52] _Bookman_, p. 652, August, 1906.
CORRUPTION IN BUSINESS AND POLITICS
V
CORRUPTION IN BUSINESS AND POLITICS
No form of corruption can exist without reacting upon the life of
the state. Pollution of the sources of public instruction defiles
individuals and all the manifold non-sovereign social organisations,
but it culminates in an infection of public opinion which directly
contaminates the body politic. Even more immediately corrupt business
practices lead to corrupt political practices. This is so conspicuously
the case that separate discussion of the two subjects is virtually
impossible. It is feasible, however, and should prove profitable,
to distinguish the various subdivisions of economic and political
corruption and to point out certain lines of the development which have
bound the two so closely together in our modern life.
Pre-eminent among the forms of business corruption are the vicious
practices which have grown up in the general relation of buyer and
seller. Purveyors of adulterated, infected, or diseased consumption
goods, such as food stuffs, and particularly meat and milk; dealers in
sweatshop clothing; vendors of patent medicines; owners and builders of
unsanitary tenement houses, of unsafe theatres, and excursion steamers;
managers of railroad and trolley companies who neglect to install
devices to protect their passengers may serve as illustrations. A
further branch of this form of corruption, the importance of which
would perhaps justify separate classification, occurs in connection
with the dealers in vice,—the dive keepers, policy kings, gamblers,
and procurers. The relation of master and servant furnishes a
second subdivision of the primarily economic forms of corruption.
Transportation companies, mine owners, manufacturers, and others who
neglect the installation of safety devices to protect labourers; the
employers of child labour; the labour leaders who extort blackmail by
threatening strikes are cases in point. Still another subdivision of
economic corruption centres about the fiduciary business relations
such as occur particularly in connection with savings banks, trust
companies, corporate directorships in general, and with the work of the
promoter. Underlying nearly all these kinds of economic corruption,
and emerging in the corruption of public instruction and political
corruption as well, is competition,—itself a force or method rather
than a form. Some species of corruption belonging logically under one
or another of the preceding heads exhibit the effects of competition
more plainly than others. Thus many practices common to those periods
of forced competition which so frequently precede the formation of
trusts have come to be looked upon as essentially corrupt and deserving
of legal restraint. Corruption does not disappear when competition is
practically eliminated, however. Some of the most difficult problems
involved in dealing with it notoriously result from the existence of
monopolies which have outstripped if they have not exterminated their
rivals.
To attempt the adequate discussion of all the forms of economic
corruption would require extended treatises on the labour problem,
the trust problem, banking, transportation, insurance, and many other
special subjects. The limitations of the present study exclude anything
beyond a few general observations. It may first be noted that many of
the abuses which are now undergoing the process of sanitation were
the result not so much of corrupt intention as of ignorance and the
relatively unlimited character of the competitive struggle to which
reference has already been made. They emerged long before the era of
consolidation, and are therefore not to be attributed solely to big
business. For many years prior to the Chicago slaughter house exposures
of 1906, for example, unclean meat was sold both by large packers and
by country butchers. Small producers were and are largely responsible
for impure milk and sweatshop clothing. Petty landlords as well as
extensive holders of real estate have built unsanitary tenement houses
and overcrowded them with renters. The neglect of transportation
companies to install safety devices for the protection of passengers
and employees has in the very nature of the case been a corporation
offence. On the other hand small as well as large mining operators
have sinned in this way, and small as well as large manufacturers
have exploited child labour. Betrayal of fiduciary relationships has
naturally occurred most frequently and most disastrously in enterprises
of large capital, although by no means confined exclusively to them.
Indeed there would seem to be reason for believing that in certain
ways consolidation has aided in bringing about the correction of some
of these evils. It centres them in a few large establishments, often
in a single district of no great size, where by their very magnitude
abuses force themselves upon a sluggish public attention. Consolidation
also makes it appear that the interests of a few selfish owners are
being pursued at the cost of the general welfare. This at once enlists
popular support for attacks upon abuses, and is a factor well worth
comparison with the defensive strength of massed capital. For these
reasons the cleaning up of the meat industry probably proceeded far
more rapidly after the Chicago exposures than would have been the case
if the effort had been made some years earlier during the period of
many scattered local abattoirs.
So many factors co-operated in bringing about the business evils under
consideration that the quality of corruption cannot always be ascribed
to them directly. Under a policy of _laisser faire_, of unlimited
competition, of public indifference and apathy, it is not easy to fix
moral responsibility. Even the twentieth mean man at any given time
may be only a little meaner than several of his nineteen competitors.
His offences are dictated by self-interest, of course, but they are
offences against a vague set of business customs or moral principles.
Public interest suffers, it is true, but the public is apathetic; it
has not laid down definite norms of business conduct. On the part of
the offender there is often lacking that conscious and purposeful
subordination of public to private interest which constitutes full
fledged corruption. Whatever degree of extenuation is afforded by
these considerations vanishes, however, when definite regulation is
undertaken by the state. Now that we are fairly launched upon an
era of legislative and administrative control, business offences of
the kind under consideration are frankly corrupt. Public apathy has
vanished, the interest of the public has been sharply defined, and he
who in contravention of these norms places his private gain above the
general welfare does so with full intent, and cannot evade or shift the
accusation of corruption.
A further consequence of the effort to regulate business practice by
law is not only intrinsically important but also serves as the great
connecting link between primarily economic and political corruption
proper. As soon as regulation is undertaken by the state a motive is
supplied to the still unterrified twentieth mean man to break the law
or to bribe its executors. In either case, by the way, the profits are
directly conditioned by the thoroughness with which his competitors
are restrained from following his own malpractices. The scales
employed by tariff officials may be tampered with in the interests of
large importers whose profits are thereby enormously increased. Or
inspectors may be bribed to pass infected carcasses, to approve impure
milk, to permit get-rich-quick concerns to use the mails, to wink at
lead weighted life preservers, to ignore the fact that the exits of
a theatre are entirely inadequate. With cases where state regulation
supplied the motive for the direct commission of fraud we are not
directly concerned here, but in all the cases where the collusion of
inspectors is involved we have to note that government regulation of
business has made easy the transmutation of what before was merely
corrupt and morally offensive into direct bribery. And from the point
of view of a venal official or political machine the extension of state
control means the widening of the opportunities for levying tribute.
Thus a form of corruption which began among, and for a time was limited
to, business relations becomes under regulation a menace to political
integrity. In other words, it takes on the form of political corruption
as well, and must, therefore, become the subject of discussion in that
connection.
However disheartening in other ways, a consideration of the forms of
business corruption yields the comforting reflection that all the
major forms of evil in this field are clearly recognised and severely
criticised. One must guard oneself against too cheerful optimism in
the premises, however. Reform forces armed _cap-a-pie_ do not spring
like unheralded knight errants of old into every breach at which social
integrity is being assailed. Instead they can be developed only by
persistent individual and associated effort and sacrifice. Moreover
the problem of corruption, as we have seen, is a persistent one, the
forms of which are ever changing and ever requiring new ingenuity and
resourcefulness in the methods of social sanitation. Back of reform
effort, also, there remains much that the individual can affect
simply by clearer habits of moral reflection and action even in the
small affairs of life. Public sentiment is built of such individual
fragments. Low opinion, low action in everyday affairs become a part
of the psychological atmosphere befogged by which the outlines even of
the larger evils of the present régime grow indistinct. Professor Ross
has performed a valuable service by exposing the fallacy that “sinners
should be chastised only by their betters.”[53] Social life, indeed,
would be inconceivable if the judgment of disinterested parties were
not superior to that of parties in interest. This is true even if the
former are themselves far from moral perfection. But it is further
true that the judgment of the disinterested will be more worthy and
helpful if in the conduct of their own affairs the disinterested have
habituated themselves to scrupulous honesty of thought and action. Till
this is more generally the case social ostracism, public contempt, and
loathing of the corruptionist, regardless of his looted wealth, will
not prove such effective measures of restraint as one might hope. “The
simplest reform,” said Mr. James B. Dill, “the hardest, but it must
be the first, is to make up our minds not to do those things which
the other man may be doing, but which we know to be wrong.”[54] Of
course the universal acceptance of such higher individual standards
would solve not only the problems of corruption but all our other
social and moral difficulties. We may not hope for the early arrival
of the millennium in this way, but neither may we hope for any large
movement toward better conditions without improvement of personal
character. Under our present circumstances much may be accomplished
by institutional reform, by legislation and the application of the
power of the state, although none of these is possible without the
application of the good will, the clearer intelligence and honesty of
individuals. If not the first or only reform, then, still it is clear
that no movement against corruption is complete which does not demand
frank recognition by the individual that he must deliberately choose
to get along less rapidly at times when the cost of advancement is
personal dishonour.
* * * * *
Corrupt practices may begin in, and at first be limited to, the
business world, but, as we have just seen, they are likely to overstep
economic boundaries and become a menace to the integrity of the state.
As such they must also be recognised and discussed as derivative forms
of political corruption. But in addition to evils of this kind which
originate, as it were, in other fields, various subdivisions of the
forms of corruption which immediately involve government may be marked
out tentatively for subsequent illustration and discussion.
To gain means for its support the state is obliged to impose taxes and
other burdens upon its citizens. The self-interest of the latter leads
them into many evasive practices of a more or less corrupt character.
The state is also a great buyer of materials and services of all sorts,
and hence subject to fraud in innumerable forms. It is further a great
seller and provider of various services, and is equally exposed to
danger in this capacity. Efforts by the state to regulate or suppress
vice and crime necessarily lead to attempts on the part of the vicious
and criminal to protect themselves by corrupt means. Without outside
collusion public officials may endeavour to exploit in their private
interest the powers which were conferred upon them solely for the
public benefit, and the result is auto-corruption, as defined in an
earlier study.[55] Preyed upon by corruption the state also at times
instigates corruption in the pursuit of its own ends, particularly
where international rivalries are concerned.[56] Finally the control of
government by political parties may lead to the purchase or stealing
of elections and the perversion of the functions of all the organs of
government in the interests of the machine. The fundamental importance
of the practices which fall under the last head is apparent. Upon them
ultimately depends the ability to maintain and profit by all the other
forms of political corruption.
* * * * *