CORRUPTION IN THE PROFESSIONS, JOURNALISM, AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION
IV
CORRUPTION IN THE PROFESSIONS, JOURNALISM, AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION
The wisdom of some quasi-philosophic counsellors of ambitious youth expresses itself in the aphorism that in this world there are as many doors labelled “pull” as there are labelled “push.” Without admitting the equality in ratio of the two kinds of avenues to material well being, it is undeniable that a great many of our social relationships are very commonly exploited by interests of a more or less directly personal character. Church membership, for example, may be maintained chiefly as a stepping stone to business, professional, or social success. Business men are overrun with solicitations for aid to church and charitable purposes under circumstances which suggest the discrete advertisement of their delinquency in case they do not contribute “according to their means,” and the probable loss of custom in consequence. The charitable organisations themselves are imposed upon by unworthy applicants for relief who display a pertinacity and ingenuity calculated to destroy all faith in any trait of human nature except universal parasitism. Of course one should not look a gift horse in the mouth, but in the case of many presentations from inferiors to superiors or from favour-seekers to men of influence the motives of the givers, and also at times of the recipients, are certainly not beyond suspicion. The ethics of the petty tipping system are dubious at best. Labourers “soldier on their jobs”; clerks appropriate office supplies as “perquisites”; there are “tricks in all trades.” To avoid conflicts in the kitchen good housewives frequently send bad servants away with excellent “characters.” During hard time winters newspapers maintain free soup stations and publish the harrowing details of the poverty which they are relieving in such a sensational fashion that even the most guileless reader finds himself wondering whether any motive connected with self-advertisement or circulation reinforces the charitable sentiments of the journalist. On the other hand many a queer and clever scheme is devised to secure newspaper notoriety for some presumably deserving person or cause. The ways of authors with critics, and of critics with authors for that matter, are said at times to stand in need of criticism themselves. “Dead easy” professors and “snap” courses (of which, be it said with grief and contrition, every institution seems to have a few samples) are exploited by college students whose mental efforts in other directions are hopelessly inhibited by chronic brain fag. In short every person charged with administrative duties in connection with any social organisation, be it a business house, a club, a church, a school, a charity, or what not, is familiar ad nauseam with the fact that tacit or overt efforts are constantly being made both by outsiders and insiders to procure suspensions of the rules or other unwarranted privileges and favours.
It would, however, be an unnecessarily harsh judgment to condemn all actions of the foregoing character as corrupt. If criticism is to be attempted it must be based on a full knowledge of motives in given cases, and these are not always apparent. Then, too, customs have grown up under the influence of which men act without analyzing the real nature of their conduct. Reflection would show, however, that, with the exception of conscious evil intent, the elements of corruption are present not only in the cases cited above, but in many others which are constantly being encountered in the course of the day’s experiences. It is certainly an error to assume that all the grafters are engaged in “big” business or “big” politics. Let us not excuse in the slightest degree the misdeeds of great corporations, but, on the other hand, let us not forget that conduct of a precisely similar ethical colour is sometimes indulged in by labourers, clerks, small retailers, farmers, and others. The fact that corrupt or “near” corrupt practices are more common than people are ordinarily inclined to believe is significant in another way. There is always a direct relationship between the characteristic petty offences of a people and its characteristic major crimes. Thus in a country given over to brawling, crimes of violence will be numerous. Chicane largely prevalent in every day affairs will certainly breed an atmosphere favourable to the perpetration of gigantic frauds. For this reason the minor forms of corruption which occur in the daily life of a people are worthy of much more attention than they ordinarily receive.
Let us turn now from the petty and dubious manifestations of a corrupt spirit to those larger and more directly threatening practices which have become subject to public criticism and in some cases to repressive legislation. The field thus ventured upon is so extensive and its features are so involved that no progress can be made in its discussion without classification. Yet any scheme of classification that may be attempted must encounter great difficulties. Individual judgments vary widely regarding the importance or degree of danger to the public interest of various anti-social developments. Along certain lines corrupt practices have been exploited by journalistic enterprise with great pertinacity, while other suspicious areas are still largely neglected. As a consequence of the very difficulties which embarrass it, however, there is a certain justification even for a confessedly imperfect classification. A service of considerable importance may be rendered merely by bringing together in the form of an outline all or nearly all the more threatening forms of corruption in such a way that some of their salient characteristics and interrelations are more clearly developed. Without therefore claiming finality for the following arrangement it would seem desirable to distinguish roughly two great fields of corrupt practices: first, corruption in professional life generally; and second, corruption in business and politics. The divisions and subdivisions of these two groups will be indicated later. Corruption in professional life will be discussed with some detail in the present study.[40] Business and political corruption, the interrelations of which are very numerous and close, will form the subject of the following paper.
Corruption in professional life may be held to involve virtually all of our social leadership outside of business and politics. Apart from the specific services rendered by the various professions their principal practitioners are instinctively looked up to by the community for guidance. In a broad sense all professional men are teachers. Corruption in the professions is thus equivalent to the defilement of the sources of public instruction. Yet precisely on this ground very sweeping and bitter accusations are made. Law, journalism, and the higher education are more frequently attacked, but medicine, philanthropy, and theology also come in for criticism. To cite specific instances:—editors are accused of wholesale misrepresentation and suppression of news in behalf of sinister interests; college professors, assumed to be subtly bribed by munificent endowments, are reproached as the crafty inventors of philosophic excuses for menacing public evils; lawyers are denounced as servile hirelings who “justify the wicked for reward” and who accept crooked corporation or political work without demur; ministers, philanthropic workers, and other leaders of thought are said to be purchased by large contributions, gifts of parks, playgrounds, hospitals, and so on.[41] There are many modern Micahs who go about saying of our people that “the heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money.”
Corruption of the sources of public instruction is manifestly replete with the potency of evil. If a nation’s “men of light and leading” fail in their function the case is hopeless indeed. Moreover the regulation of the various sources of public instruction is a task the complexity of which far excels that of any problem presented by the other forms of corruption. No insuperable technical difficulty is involved, for example, in prescribing the standard of pure milk, the proper safety devices for theatres, the best method of fencing dangerous machinery in mills, the adequate safeguarding of the interests of policy holders in life insurance companies. But who will tell us with authority exactly what is news and what isn’t; who will define explicitly the standard of orthodoxy for university instruction in economics and political science; who will provide ministers of the gospel with a social creed drawn up with the precision and free from the dogmatic differences of their theological creeds? It is not strange, therefore, that although there has been much vague talk of “tainted money,” proposals for the legal definition and regulation of its alleged pernicious consequences have been wanting. We already have extended and complicated legal systems of inspection and regulation of many of the material goods of life, while but little has been done or even concretely outlined in the direction of state supervision of ideal goods and services.
Great as are the technical difficulties in the way of the latter policy, the real reason for its lack of advocates would seem to lie in the partial efficiency of the various ancient and highly socialised codes of professional ethics. Competition in the economic world has not been similarly safeguarded from within. With the breakdown of the guild system and the sudden changes introduced by the industrial revolution business found itself upon an uncharted sea. Laisser faire, laisser aller seemed perfectly obvious in this spacious time of untouched world markets, but latterly distances have dwindled, density has increased, and collisions with social norms have become increasingly frequent. Too often and too easily competition has been pushed beyond the limits of social safety. In the economic struggle the “twentieth mean man” has been able to wield compulsory power over his nineteen decent competitors and to force them on pain of bankruptcy to adopt his own lower standards. The professional “mean men,” on the other hand, knew from the start that they were derogating from the ethics of their fellow practitioners, and in many cases were brought quickly to book for it. Here rather than in any differences of personal integrity must be found the reason for the higher moral reputation enjoyed by professional as compared with business men. It is impossible to believe that of the brothers of the family the black sheep always went into business and the good boys into medicine or the ministry. Finally we may expect the general immunity of the professions from state regulation to continue just so long as they develop progressively their own police systems. In this connection it is significant that that one of them which has been most frequently and severely accused of abetting corruption in economic and political fields, namely the law, is precisely the one which has shown the most concern recently in the reformation of its code of ethics.[42] Obviously such sanitary processes may be materially hastened by the pressure from without of a forceful and honest popular feeling in opposition to abuses which have grown up in professional practice.
The greatest immediate influence upon public opinion is exerted, of course, by journalism. The question of its corruption or corruptibility is, therefore, one of prime importance. Accusations against the press on this score are common enough, but few of them are so sweeping as the following attributed to the late John Swinton, formerly of the New York Sun and Tribune.[43] At a banquet of the New York Press Association in 1895, in response to a toast on “The Independent Press” he is reported to have said:
“There is no such thing in America as an independent press unless it is in the country towns. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dare express an honest opinion. If you express it, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150 per week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should permit honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, like Othello, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of the New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and race for his daily bread; or for what is about the same thing, his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an ‘independent press.’ We are tools, and the vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping jacks. They pull the string and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, all are the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
It is hardly probable that any one not himself accustomed to drafting headlines could have so far exaggerated a situation, even under post-prandial influences, as did the author of the above paragraph. Whatever may be the measure of the sinning of any newspaper, certainly no single sheet has ever been the corrupt apologist for all anti-social interests. A paper which at any one time should attempt to stand for unsanitary tenement houses, for child labour, for quack medicines, for “embalmed” beef, for “tainted money” colleges, for monopoly tactics in beating down small competitors, for life insurance frauds, for the spoils system, the stealing of elections, and franchise grabbing,—or for any considerable number of these,—would certainly lose its influence with extreme suddenness. Newspapers are of all kinds, of course. They differ even more in character than do individuals. As the focal points of every interest in a community the interests of a newspaper are much more diverse than those of the individual, and, as in the case of the individual, these interests are shot through and through with the noble and the base. Few people who are unfamiliar with the practical making of newspapers realise what a constant and bitter struggle is being waged in many cases to keep them free from selfish and dishonest influences. In other instances, of course, the partial triumph of the counting-room is palpable. Advertising columns still carry, although with much less frequency than formerly, the insertions of get-rich-quick schemes, of bucket-shops, of salary-loan sharks, of quack doctors, quack medicines, and clairvoyants. Of course these are frankly presented as paid matter, and every reader of intelligence understands that they are inspired by the directly selfish motives of the advertiser. When one thinks of the poor, the ignorant, and the sick, who are exploited through such agencies, however, the despicable character of the abuse is manifest. In some papers, also, the reader finds abundant evidence of the activities of press and publicity bureaus working in the interest of certain forms of business. Morally this abuse is much worse than the foregoing, for it throws off the form of advertising and clothes itself as news or editorial opinion.
Large advertisers, particularly since the development of daily full page announcements by department stores, also insist at times, and not always ineffectually, upon exerting influence over news and editorial columns. A pitch of absurdity seldom realised in this connection was exemplified by the silence or approval with which the press of one of our largest cities, a single paper honourably excepted, treated the clearly mistaken philanthropy of a certain wealthy merchant who had established many distributing stations for sterilised, rather than Pasteurised milk. The paralysing effect of box office influence upon sincere and vigorous dramatic criticism is another deplorable instance of the same sort.
Finally there are papers which, however free they may keep themselves from outside interests, nevertheless represent the immediate political or economic ambitions of their owners. It is easy to exaggerate this abuse not only with regard to its present extent absolutely considered, but also with reference to its contemporary development as compared with the press of the past. In its earlier periods journalism was almost universally the tool of party. During the civil war,—the epoch of great editorial personalities,—political ambitions constantly invaded the sanctum with the result that the gross unfairness and bitter partisanship engendered by the times were doubly and trebly emphasised in the columns of the press. The new journalism which began its career about 1875 not only prints more news but prints it more fairly than the old school. Of course most of our papers are still the recognised organs of some party, but they are far from being servile and characterless advocates of every party policy. Moreover there is a considerable number of politically independent papers, some of which are avowedly so, while others are really so although they may still wear lightly some party emblem. Fearless, continued criticism of public abuses is more and more coming to be recognised as good policy both for a paper and for the commonweal.
Unfortunately there is another side to this record of improvement and achievement. Perhaps the most important single difference between the old personal journalism and the journalism of to-day is the large capitalistic character of the latter. When the mechanical outfit of a city paper could be supplied with a comparatively small sum of money, the personality of the editor was all important, although, as we have seen, even this favouring economic condition did not by any means produce uncorrupted journalism. At the present time large capital is necessary not only to provide the equipment, but also to meet the heavy losses of the few inevitable lean years at the outset. In most cases the money is contributed by one man or by a comparatively small number of men whose other business interests are likely to be very harmonious if not already consolidated. In consequence there is a common, and withal very human, tendency on the part of the paper thus established and owned to deal favourably under all circumstances with the financial interest or group of interests back of it. This is the typical journalistic danger of the present period, just as the political bee in the editor’s bonnet was the typical evil of the old personal journalism. Legislation requiring newspapers to print the names of their principal owners, and to deposit full lists of stockholders in some state office of record where they could be made available to all comers, ought to limit considerably the possibility of capitalistic manipulation of the press. By revealing facts regarding financial control which at best can only be suspected at the present time, publicity of this character would enable readers to make the necessary allowances for any undue form of counting-room control which might manifest itself in the editorial or news columns of a given paper. In spite of this and other shortcomings, however, most observers agree that the American press as a whole is more independent to-day than ever before.
In considering abuses which affect our journalism one should not forget certain conditions which set a limit to the corrupt manipulation of the greatest single agency of public instruction. A modern newspaper is a large capitalistic enterprise, of course, but its business is peculiar in that it must sell its product to tens of thousands of people every day at the price of a cent or two per copy. However plutocratic a paper may be at one end it always represents the extreme of democracy at the other. Our press is occasionally prostituted by large moneyed interests, but it is in much more constant danger of that directly opposite form of corruption, namely demagogy. Reform of the press depends ultimately upon the reform of its readers. Even on the latter side, however, we have to note an increasing and very gratifying readiness on the part of our papers to tell the American people the truth about themselves and about foreign peoples regardless of all our old time prejudices and antipathies.[44]
Reverting to the plutocratic influences affecting the press, however, we have seen that in the nature of things no single newspaper can become the tool of all the anti-social interests. It can defend effectively only the few which for one reason or another are approved by the managers of its policy. Usually a newspaper which is thus silent or mildly unctuous on certain abuses endeavours to rehabilitate itself by the condemnation, sometimes in a sensational and even hysterical fashion, of other abuses, thus conducting, so to speak, a vigorous department of moral foreign affairs. As a result the position taken by the press as a whole on most points is strongly favourable to the public interest. On this ground one may find a philosophic justification for the sentiment so compactly phrased by Mr. George William Curtis to the effect that “no abuse of a free press can be so great as the evil of its suppression.”[45]
Even in dealing with those subjects concerning which a given paper is not honest with its readers great care must be exercised. So far as possible it must conceal the evidences of selfish interest and present its case on grounds of public policy. Now arguments based on such grounds are always worthy at least of consideration. A very large part of political discussion, not only journalistic but of other kinds, is “inspired” in this fashion, and it not infrequently happens that what may be in accord with the self interest of individuals and groups is also in accord with public interest. If this is not the case a competing paper ought to be able to expose pretty effectively the false assertions of its wily contemporary. In dealing with national questions which are discussed by newspapers in every part of the country this function of mutual criticism is in general well performed. Cases occur, however, especially in connection with municipal issues, where practically every paper of wide local circulation is either silenced or actively engaged in the support of a crooked deal. Under such circumstances a fight in defence of public interest is almost hopeless. The more nearly the press of a given district approaches this condition of corrupt paralysis, however, the brighter are the opportunities for an opposition paper. In journalism as everywhere in the world of social phenomena the inviolable law prevails that a function cannot be abused without corresponding harm to the agency which allows itself to be perverted. If it should ever happen,—although at the present time the prospect seems remote enough,—that a thoroughgoing control embracing the daily papers of the whole country should be established in defence of consolidated interests, it is certain that some new agency of publicity would spring up in the interest of the people as a whole. In the end the daily papers themselves would be the worst sufferers from a general perversion of their activities. As a matter of fact a new and powerful journalistic organ has already developed an influence not incomparable with that of the daily press. The wonderful growth of the low priced monthly and weekly magazines during the decade just past has been explained on various grounds:—the cheapening of paper and of illustrations, the second-class mailing privilege, the effectiveness of such media for advertisement, and so on. No doubt these factors go far toward explaining the great expansion of magazine circulation, but in spite of much journalistic prejudice to the contrary circulation and influence are not necessarily correlative. And the influence, as distinct from the circulation, of the magazines has been due very largely to the boldness and effectiveness with which they assailed many public abuses with regard to which for one reason or another the daily press was silent or even favourable. Of course the detached situation of the magazines made it easy and even profitable for them to pursue policies which might have cost the newspapers dear. In any event a new way was found for the effective journalistic presentation of the public interest.
In discussing the alleged corruption of the learned professions as a whole reference was made to the powerful influence of professional codes of ethics. One must recognise the journalistic instinct and journalistic traditions as strong factors of similar character. Even where editorial and reportorial staffs have given way, for purely bread and butter reasons, to what they knew were the selfish suggestions of controlling financial interests these same interests must sometimes have wondered at the lukewarmness of their paper’s support, and also, perhaps, at the enthusiasm which it manifested for some good cause indifferent to them. Moreover professional standards are rising in this field as well as elsewhere. No one has given clearer or more forcible expression to the highest of these newer ideals of journalism than Mr. George Harvey of the North American Review, whose words, by the way, present the extreme of contrast to those quoted earlier from Mr. Swinton. After pointing out that the great editorial leaders of the past generation,—Greeley, Raymond, Dana, Bennett,—were shackled by their own political ambitions, Mr. Harvey asks:
“What, then, shall we conclude? That an editor shall bar acceptance of public position under any circumstances? Yes, absolutely, and any thought or hope of such preferment, else his avowed purpose is not his true one, his policy is one of deceit in pursuance of an unannounced end; his guidance is untrustworthy, his calling that of a teacher false to his disciples for personal advantage, his conduct a gross betrayal not only of public confidence, but also of the faith of every true journalist jealous of a profession which should be of the noblest and the farthest removed from base uses in the interests of selfish men.” ...
“He [the journalist] is, above all, a teacher who, through daily appeals to the reason and moral sense of his constituency, should become a real leader.... Above capital, above labour, above wealth, above poverty, above class, and above people, subservient to none, quick to perceive and relentless in resisting encroachments by any, the master journalist should stand as the guardian of all, the vigilant watchman on the tower ever ready to sound the alarm of danger, from whatever source, to the liberties and the laws of this great union of free individuals.”[46]
Discussion of the “tainted money” charge so far as it affects our universities and colleges can not, of course, be presented with complete objectivity by the present writer. Nothing can be promised beyond an earnest effort to attain detachment and impartiality. On the other hand, a decade spent in the active teaching of the principal debatable subjects in three institutions of widely different character may furnish a basis of experience of some value.[47]
First of all there must be no blinking of the importance of the subject. “It is manifest,” wrote the acute Hobbes, “that the Instruction of the people, dependeth wholly, on the right teaching of Youth in the Universities.” Quaint as is the language in which he defends this proposition the argument which it contains is applicable with few changes to modern conditions.
“They whom necessity, or couvetousnesse keepeth attent on their trades, and labour; and they, on the other side, whom superfluity, or sloth carrieth after their sensuall pleasures, (which two sorts of men take up the greatest part of Man-kind,) being diverted from the deep meditation, which the learning of truth, not onely in the matter of Natural Justice, but also of all other Sciences necessarily requireth, receive the Notions of their duty, chiefly from Divines in the Pulpit, and partly from such of their Neighbours, or familiar acquaintance, as having the Faculty of discoursing readily, and plausibly, seem wiser and better learned in cases of Law, and Conscience, than themselves. And the Divines, and such others as make shew of Learning, derive their knowledge from the Universities, and from the Schooles of Law, or from the Books, which by men eminent in those Schooles, and Universities have been published.”[48]
In spite of the development of other intermediate agencies of public instruction since the seventeenth century, and particularly of the press and our elementary school system, the influence of universities and colleges was never greater than it is at present, and it is an influence which is constantly increasing in strength. The number of universities and colleges is larger, their work is more efficient, their curricula are broader, the number of college bred men in the community is greater, and their leadership therein more perceptible than ever before. Professors are enlisting in industrial, scientific, and social activities outside academic walls in a way undreamed of so long as the old monastic ideals held sway. By extension lectures and still more by books and articles they are reaching larger and larger masses of the people. Newspapers formulate current public opinion, but to the writer, at least, it seems plainly apparent that the best thought of the universities and colleges to-day is the thought that in all likelihood will profoundly influence both press and public opinion in the near future. Academic observers of the sound money struggle of 1896, for example, must have smiled frequently to themselves at the arguments employed during the campaign. There was not one of them which had not been the commonplace of economic seminars for years. The newspapers and the abler political leaders on both sides simply filled their quivers with arrows drawn from academic arsenals. Extreme cleverness was shown by many journalists and campaign orators in popularising this material, in adapting it to local conditions, and in placing it broadcast before the people, but of original argumentation on their part there was scarcely a scintilla. It is significant also that the battle of the ballots was decided in favour of the contention which commanded the majority of scientific supporters. Subsequent political issues, great and small, have developed very similar phenomena, although of course it would be absurd to assert that in all cases the dominant opinion of the literati prevailed at the ballot. There are also certain academic ideals of the day with which practical politics and business are demonstrably and crassly at variance. Not until the fate of many future battles is decided can we estimate the full strength of the university influence on such pending questions. Victory would seem assured in a sufficient number of cases, however, to make it clear that just as the wholesomeness of the public opinion of to-day is conditioned by the independence of the press, so the wholesomeness of the public opinion of to-morrow will be determined largely by the independence of our colleges and universities.
As compared with the press, universities possess certain great advantages which justify the public in demanding from them higher standards of accuracy and impartiality. The professor enjoys some measure of leisure; the editor is always under the lash of production on the stroke of the event. It is also a very considerable advantage that the editorial “we” and the anonymity of the newspaper are foreign to college practice. There is, of course, a pretty well recognised body of opinion on methods and ideals common to the faculties of our learned institutions, but in the separate fields of departmental work any opinion that may be expressed is primarily the opinion of the professor expressing it. His connection with a given institution is, indeed, a guaranty of greater or less weight as to his general scholarly ability, and he will, of course, be mindful of this in all that he says or writes. But beyond this his personal reputation is directly involved. Those who make a newspaper suffer collectively and more or less anonymously for any truckling to corrupt interests. The college president or teacher guilty of an offence of the same sort must suffer in his own person the contempt of his colleagues, his students, and the public generally.
Newspapers, moreover, are usually managed by private corporations frankly seeking profit as one of their ends. Universities and colleges, on the other hand, are much more free from the directly economic motive. There are, however, certain large qualifications to the advantages which institutions of learning thus enjoy. Every university and college is constantly perceiving new means of increasing its usefulness and persistently seeking to secure them. The demands made in behalf of such purposes may seem excessive at times, but it is clear that an educational institution which does not appreciate the vital importance of the work it is doing, and consequently the importance of expanding that work, is simply not worth its salt. In a great many cases the readiest means of securing the necessary funds is by appeal to rich men for large gifts and endowments. As the number of munificent Mæcenases is always limited and the number of needy institutions always very considerable, a competitive struggle ensues, different in most of its incidents from the directly profit seeking struggles of the business world, but essentially competitive none the less. In the campaign of a university or college for expansion a large body of students makes a good showing; hence too often low entrance requirements weakly enforced and low standards of promotion. At times even the springs of discipline are relaxed lest numbers should be reduced by a salutary expulsion or two. Courses are divided and subdivided beyond the real needs of an institution and salaries are reduced in order to secure a sufficient number of teachers to give the large number of courses advertised with great fulness in the catalogue. A large part of crooked collegiate athletics is due to an indurated belief in the advertising efficacy of gridiron victories as a means of attracting first, students, and then endowments. So far as charges of corruption against our higher educational institutions are at all justified they are justified chiefly by the practices just described. Fairness requires the statement, however, that a marked change of heart is now taking place. Public criticism has placed athletic graft in the pillory to such an extent that enlightened self-interest, if no better motive, should bring about its speedy abolition by responsible college managements. Many sincere efforts have been made by members of faculties singly and through organisations covering certain fields of study to raise and properly enforce entrance and promotion standards. Finally in the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching there has been developed an agency of unparalleled efficiency for detecting and exposing low standards. A college may continue to publish fake requirements, to crowd its class rooms with students who belong to high schools, to pad its courses, to underpay and overwork its instructing staff, but if it does these things it cannot, even if otherwise qualified, secure pensions for its professors, and in any event its derelictions will be advertised broadcast in the reports of the Foundation with a precision and a conviction beyond all hope of rebuttal. Let cynics smile at a process which they may describe as bribing the colleges to be good by pensioning their superannuates, but unquestionably the work of the Foundation has resulted in a new uprightness, a new firmness of standards, a higher efficiency that bodes well for the future of American education. Parents may give material encouragement to this movement by reading the publications of the Carnegie Foundation, as well as college catalogues and advertisements, before they determine upon an institution for the education of their children.
Although the conditions just described are the principal evil results of the competitive struggle for college and university expansion, the accusations of corruption against institutions of learning have usually dealt with their teaching of the doctrines of economics, sociology, and political science. Endowments must be secured; as a rule they can be had only from the very rich; among the very rich are numbered most of the “malefactors of great wealth”;—ergo university and college teaching on such subjects must be made pleasing or at least void of all offence to plutocratic interests.
There is a certain disproportion between the means and the ends considered by the foregoing argument which is worth notice. To found or endow a college or university requires a great deal of money. Any institution worthy of either name is made up of numerous departments,—languages, literature, the natural sciences, history, and the social sciences,—of which only the last named are concerned with the moot questions of the day. If one cherished the Machiavellian notion of corrupting academic opinion to his economic interest he would be obliged, therefore, to support an excessively large number of departments the work of which would be absolutely indifferent to him. Endowment of the social sciences alone would be rather too patent. That they are not over-endowed at the present time in comparison with their importance relative to other departments is a condition the large mournfulness of which seems beyond all possibility of doubt to the writer. Nor should it be forgotten that the teachers of the social sciences form but a small minority of the whole body of university and collegiate instructors in all subjects. Nevertheless they are subject to the rigid general standards of accuracy, fairness, and impartiality prescribed by the profession as a whole, and enforced severely whether the offender be a biologist, a philologist, or an economist. Criticism is far more relentless and constant in this sphere than laymen are wont to suspect, except on the rare occasions when some more than ordinarily virulent controversy is taken up by the daily papers. Under such conditions any academic tendency either toward servility or toward demagogy is not likely to go long unchallenged.
Considering the high cost and small profits of university manipulation in this light it is very doubtful whether so indirect a method of social defence would appeal to our financial pirates. Whatever their defects or vices, men of this type have at least received the rigorous training of the business career. They are not philosophers of farsighted vision, nor are they easily perturbed by fears of distant dangers. Troubles near at hand they see very clearly; indeed, one of the chief grounds of clamour against such men is the crass directness of the bribery to which on occasion they resort. Interests under fire appeal rather to political hirelings, to venal lawyers, to the courts, to legislatures, or to the press for effective protection and defence. College doctrines are too remote, too uncertain of manipulation to be of assistance. Although they did not learn it from the poet, business men are certainly not unmindful that:
“was ein Professor spricht
Nicht gleich zu allen dringet.”
Given both the motive and the means, however, the task of corrupting the college teaching of economic, political, and social doctrines would seem almost hopelessly difficult. A given institution, may, indeed, be endowed almost exclusively by a certain man of great wealth. With very few exceptions knowledge of such munificence is made public property. If then the president or professors of such a university should endeavour to justify or palliate the business conduct of the founder their motives will be suspected from the start and their arguments, however artfully they might plead the case, discounted accordingly. If discretion were thrown to the winds (there is perhaps one case of this sort) the net effect of the work of such apologists, instead of aiding their financial friends, might profoundly injure and embarrass them. Those who are familiar with the character of the American student know that he would be the first to detect any insincerity in the discussion of public questions by an instructor or college official. If the prosperity of the college were due almost entirely to a single bounteous donor its venal professors would, of course, have no direct motive to defend the economic misconduct of any other than their particular friend among the captains of industry. Possibly they might develop a policy similar to that of newspapers in the same predicament,—silence or soft speaking regarding the sins of their great and rich friend combined with louder trumpetings against the social misconduct of other and indifferent financial interests. In the case of all our important institutions of learning, however, funds of very considerable size in the aggregate have been received from many sources in the past, and new gifts, even when they are of large amount, represent merely fractional additions thereto. Those who know our colleges and universities will find it hard to believe that the old academic ideals and traditions of well supported institutions, their scientific honesty and earnest devotion to broad public service, are to be cheaply bought by gifts of half a million or more from the nouveau riche. There is such a thing as loyalty to the small gifts often made with the highest motives and the greatest sacrifices by generations long since dead. Few institutions desire to disregard this sentiment, and no institution can disregard it with impunity.
Finally there are the great state institutions of the country, maintained almost wholly by taxation and hence free from any corrupting influence that large endowments might exercise. There can be no doubt that the possession of these two fundamentally different kinds of economic support is a great safeguard to the independence of university instruction in the United States. No country is more blatant in asserting its Lehrfreiheit than Germany, but there the exclusive reliance of universities upon state support, coupled with the tremendous strength of government, makes necessary very considerable modification of the Teutonic boast of absolute academic freedom. To be sure state institutions in the United States have been charged at times with similar subservience to legislatures and political leaders. Whatever perversion of this sort may have occurred it was at least not turned to the advantage of corporate misdoing. Indeed it probably had a directly opposite and strongly demagogic trend. Fortunately our state universities are becoming so powerful, so well fortified by high and honest traditions, so beloved by great and rapidly growing bodies of influential alumni that the days of their dependence upon political favour are well nigh over. It is now beyond all doubt that they are destined to a career of immense usefulness to our democracy, and it seems highly probable that they will overtake, if they do not ultimately excel, the great endowed institutions of the country. If the latter should ever show themselves subject to the influence of predatory wealth the development of well supported public universities should supply the necessary corrective. At the present time, however, a strong presumption of the general devotion of both classes of institutions to the public welfare is afforded by the fact that no recognisable distinction exists between the general doctrines of economics, political, and social science as taught in endowed schools on the one hand and in state schools on the other.
It was unfortunately essential to the foregoing argument that the worst motives should be assumed on the part of college benefactors. Justice requires ample correction of this point. A conspiracy to influence the social doctrines of our colleges, as we have seen, is neither so inexpensive, so direct, nor so likely to succeed as to commend itself to business men looking for immediate results. No doubt there have been men of wealth who by large and well advertised benefactions to colleges and universities have sought not to influence college teaching but to rehabilitate themselves and their business methods in popular esteem. Conspicuous giving with this penitential purpose in view is not likely to prove very effective, however. The sharp insight as to motives and the half humourous cynicism peculiar to American character are sufficient safeguards against the purchase of undeserved sympathy by rich offenders. In spite of the enormous sums given in the United States not only to the higher educational institutions but also for many other educational and philanthropic purposes, it seems extremely doubtful that public opinion has been affected thereby favourably to plutocratic interests. Few of the great mass are directly touched and consciously benefited by such gifts, but all are able to see (and if not they are helped by radicals to see), the superfluity out of which the donations were made. Benefactors, prospective and actual, must face the certainty of much criticism and misinterpretation. So far as this criticism is unjust it is to be regretted; so far as it is just it contributes materially to social welfare. Investments in business are judged as to their wisdom by the ready tests of profits and permanence; investments in social work are not subject to tests so accurate and so easily applied. To some extent their place is taken by the advice and criticism of workers in the field. Still there is large possibility that gifts for social work may be applied in useless or even in harmful ways. A wise conception of the function of the philanthropist must therefore include a realisation of the value of criticism by specialists, and also a determination either to ignore misinterpretation and unjust criticism, or to await its reversal by a better informed, if somewhat belated public opinion.
Besides the possible but not always probable motives for making large gifts referred to above every other conceivable influence has affected educational benefactions. George Ade’s breezy Chicago magnate who slaps the college president on the back and says: “Have a laboratory on me, old fellow,” is slangy, to be sure, but not altogether fabulous. It is a very common misconception that financial assistance is the only thing needful in higher educational work. President Schurman of Cornell University expressed the views of many of his colleagues among the great university executives of the country when he lamented that “rich men who give their money to educational institutions cannot be induced to give also their time and energy to the management of them.”[49] So neglectful an attitude on their part, by the way, is hardly consistent with the theory that they are engaged in a conspiracy to pollute the wells of knowledge. When we consider the immense number of contributors, large and small, to the cause of higher education it is impossible to escape the conviction that behind many of their generous acts lay real sacrifice, an adequate conception of the great function of university teaching, and the purest and most humanitarian motives. Often, too, there has been full realisation that “the gift without the giver is bare,” and patient, unstinted, intelligent service has accompanied money benefactions. In the same fine spirit nearly all our colleges and universities have accepted and employed the resources so generously placed at their disposal.
While due weight should be given to the honourable influences ordinarily accompanying benefactions, candour also compels the frank discussion of those cases where constraint of professorial opinion has been attempted. There have been a few flagrant instances of the dismissal of teachers on account of utterances displeasing to men who have been drawn upon heavily for financial support. One can readily understand the feeling of the latter that, considering their large gifts, they have been most ungratefully and unjustly abused, and also the action which they accordingly instigate, although it is as silly in most cases as the Queen of Hearts’ peremptory command:—“Off with his head!” Men in other walks of life frequently behave in the same way. There is, for example, the very commonplace case of the church member who, disgruntled because of pulpit references—no matter how impersonal—to his pet sin, cuts down his contribution and seeks to drive the minister from his charge. The consequences of the dismissal of a professor because of conflict between his teachings and the outside interests of college benefactors are so widespread and dangerous, however, that they cannot be passed over lightly simply because occurrences of this sort are relatively infrequent in the academic world.
In the first instance, of course, the teacher himself may seem the chief sufferer from such controversies. Few of the clear cases of this sort, uncomplicated by any personal defect on the part of the man who is dismissed, have resulted, however, in the destruction of a promising career. On the contrary, positions have been opened up in other more liberal and often more important institutions to the teachers who have been persecuted for truth’s sake. Indeed there is some danger that the halo of false martyrdom, with its possible accompanying rewards, may mislead the younger and less judicious holders of professorships to indulge in forms of blatherskiting quite inconsistent with their office. In the great majority of cases, however, the effect of such individual assaults upon the tenure of academic position is to threaten the independence of every department in the same or related subjects the country over. Here we have the most serious evil resulting from such unfortunate occurrences. It is certainly great enough to justify the intervention of the national scientific association to which the professor belongs at least to the extent of the most searching and impartial investigation of all the circumstances involved in his dismissal, and their subsequent publication as widely as possible whether or not they justify the professor concerned. A powerful and most welcome auxiliary to the restraining influence which such investigations are bound to exercise is likely to be supplied by the Carnegie Foundation if one may judge from tendencies exhibited by its most recent report.[50] Thus in the last analysis the evil consequences of attempts to interfere with liberty of teaching are likely to fall most severely upon the institution which is so weak as to permit such manipulation. It risks exposure and loss of prestige, it loses men of worth and suffers in its capacity to attract others to take their places. All things considered there is every indication that the few institutions which have offended in this way have learned well their lesson, and are quite in the penitent frame of mind of the pious Helen:—
“... dies will ich nun
Auch ganz gewiss nicht wieder thun.”
Amid the manifold influences that environ university teaching it is impossible for any one writer to set down all the guiding professional ideals. That they are easily corruptible and frequently corrupted is, as we have seen, absurd. Of both the press and higher education it may be said that they are in the grip of forces greater than themselves, of forces mighty to restrain any tendency to be unfaithful to their own better ideals. The rapidly growing attendance and influence of universities and colleges would appear to constitute a vote of confidence on the part of the public which may be interpreted as a general denial of the charges made against them. In the great majority of institutions the writer believes that the teaching of the social sciences is dominated by the ideals of scientific honesty, thoroughness, and impartiality. No instructor is worthy of university or college position who deliberately seeks to make converts to any party or cause, however free his motives may be from the taint of personal advantage. Rather is it his duty to present systematically all moot questions in all their aspects. Like the judge summing up a case he should attempt further to supply a basis for the critical weighing of testimony by the class,—his jury. He is by no means to be inhibited from expressing an opinion, indeed he should be strongly encouraged to express it, stating it however as opinion together with the reasons that have led him to form it. But active proselyting should be rigorously barred. It is certainly no part of the duties of a professor of political science, for example, to attempt to make voters for either the Democratic or Republican ticket in a given campaign. If he attempts to do so he will certainly and deservedly fail, and in addition cripple his own influence and that of the institution which he represents. The higher duty is his of presenting all the evidence and the opinions on the points at issue and of exhibiting in his procedure the methods which will enable his students to investigate and decide for themselves not merely the political questions of the day but also the political questions they will have to meet unaided throughout their later active lives. Not voters for one campaign or recruits for one cause, but intelligent citizenship for all time and every issue,—such as is the ideal which the teacher should pursue.
Naturally this attitude does not please everybody. All sorts of interests, not only corrupting but reforming in character, are constantly endeavouring to secure academic approval in order to exploit it in their own propaganda. When this is denied, recourse to the charge of corruption by an adverse interest lies very close to a hand already habituated to mudslinging. Although the prevailing opinions of college teachers on labour legislation, to cite a specific example, are certainly not those of the manufacturer’s office, just as certainly they are broader and more progressive than the opinions of the man in the street. Of course radical labour leaders will take up still more advanced positions. In the partisanship natural to men in their situation they may even regard academic suggestions for the solution of the question as mere palliatives. It is difficult for them to appreciate the motives or the value to the cause of labour of the tempered advocacy of disinterested persons who are able to appeal to the great neutral public which in the end must pass on all labour reforms and all labour legislation. And the socialists are accustomed to go much farther than labour leaders, insinuating that capitalistic influence lurks behind every university chair in economics. Mr. W. J. Ghent puts their view of the situation as follows:
“Teachers, economists, in their search for truth, too often find it only within the narrow limits which are prescribed by endowments.”
“The economic, and, consequently, the moral, pressure exerted upon this class [i.e., “social servants,” including college teachers] by the dominant class is constant and severe; and the tendency of all moral weaklings within it is to conform to what is expected from above.”
“Educators and writers have a normal function of social service. Many of these, however, are retainers of a degraded type, whose greatest activity lies in serving as reflexes of trading-class sentiment and disseminators of trading-class views of life.”
“Rightly, it may be said that it is to his [the minister, writer, or teacher’s] economic interest to preach and teach the special ethics of the traders; that the good jobs go to those who are most eloquent, insistent, and thoroughgoing in expounding such ethics, while the poor jobs or no jobs at all go to those who are most backward or slow-witted in such exposition.”
“It may even be said that the net result of many of their [i.e., trading-class] benefactions is nothing less than the prostitution of the recipients—in particular of writers, preachers, and educators.”[51]
By way of contrast with this thoroughgoing arraignment, the opinion of Mr. Paul Elmer More may be quoted:
“Of all the substitutes for the classical discipline there is none 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.