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.