Part 3

Whether we are soon to get rid of the boss or not we are therefore bound to fight against any corruption that may develop as a result of his rule. Our present system is manifestly unstable in the long run. Individual bosses seldom retain power any great number of years. The position of the boss may remain, but “spasms” of reform usually succeed at least in introducing a new incumbent who brings with him new methods and new groups of favourites. The net result is far from guaranteeing that certainty and stability which both business and public interests demand. Even assuming that in some way security against popular upheaval could be conferred upon the boss, other difficulties would still have to be met. The large financial interests, which need the favours of government or seek release from its burdens, sometimes go to war among themselves, and in these contests control of the powers of the boss gives valuable strategic advantages. Hence many ambitious aspirants among the principal heads of the gang, each awaiting a possible palace insurrection. It is conceivable, however, that a boss might secure himself both against factional and popular disturbances, and at the same time be supported by consolidated business interests powerful beyond the possibility of successful attack by other financial groups. With further growth of corporations and the adoption of the community of interest policy among them, the latter condition might indeed be pretty thoroughly established. In this case we would have a boss as impregnable as the conception allows. True he would still operate through democratic forms, but this pseudo-democracy of his would be nothing more than a mask for oligarchy. The system might conceivably work out into a highly efficient and stable government. Both the boss and the financial interests behind him might prudently decide to content themselves with small percentages of profit, and otherwise insist on solid merit in both the men and the materials they employed. The disturbances due to popular uprisings on the part of an untrammeled voting mass would be reduced to a vanishing minimum.

In this successful combination, however, the oligarchy and not the boss would be the dominating factor. Indeed even under existing conditions the title of boss is a singularly inappropriate one in most instances. Unless the bearer is possessed of financial ability of a high order himself he must remain a lieutenant rather than a leader. Usually he does not possess this ability. Nor is the reason hard to perceive. The boss is, and probably will continue to be, a specialist in one line only, namely, political manipulation; and in his extremely exposed position this work is quite sufficient in detail and variety to absorb all the time and talents even of an extraordinarily gifted person. Under the financial oligarchy, therefore, the boss will probably be nothing more than an agent, a departmental head charged with the duty of securing the necessary majority of the popular vote at all elections and of retaining control of office holders. From this point of view the absurdity of the conception of the boss as the saviour of democracy is again apparent. At bottom his function is to secure power through his knowledge and subtle bribery of the people and to sell or lease this power to financial interests which recoup themselves out of the pockets of the people. Instead of being the saviour of democracy the net effect of his work, little perhaps as he realises it, is the selling out of democracy to oligarchy.

There is, however, not the remotest possibility that the hypothetical 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.