IV. The motive of a corrupt act must be some advantage more or less directly personal. The grosser the nature of the advantage sought and the more directly selfish the purpose, the worse from the moral point of view is the transaction. Thus in the case of venal voters or boodling aldermen we have direct transfers of money or its equivalent, to be employed later, it may be, solely to the advantage of the men who sell themselves. Or still more reprehensible, high police officials or even mayors of cities may be in receipt of sums which they know were paid originally by criminals or prostitutes for license to disobey the law. Perhaps we are too prone to think of all political corruption as consisting essentially of such gross cases and sordid transactions. In one way it is unfortunate that this is not the case, for, if it were, the task of defining and uprooting the evil by law would be comparatively easy. As a matter of fact we have to deal with every possible nuance of corruption, shading off from the most palpably illegal and immoral acts to apparently harmless transactions that are of everyday occurrence even in circles that would hotly deny the least imputation of wrong-doing.
Let us consider first the various gradations of corrupt action with reference to the advantages offered and sought. There are crassly venal persons, of course, whose itching palms are held open to receive cash bribes, but after all these are the small and stupid minority of the army of corruptionists. Many who would scorn a direct bribe are, however, quite willing to accept considerations more tactfully offered but almost as purely material in character—shares of stock, railroad passes, salaried positions, etc. In pointing out the distinction between bribery and corruption, the large possibilities of “auto-corruption” have been touched upon. The absence of a personal tempter seems very often to veil the real nature of a corrupt act, and contemporary usage completes the illusion of innocence. Tax-dodging is a case in point. Here the citizen is seeking, not a bribe, of course, but merely to cut down as far as possible an inevitable deduction from his income. He may depend upon his political influence, his friendship with assessors, his contributions to campaign funds, or upon the misrepresentation of facts in obtaining the reduction, but he would refuse indignantly to offer a cash bribe to secure action which he knew would be disadvantageous to the government. He might refuse with equal heat to accept a cash bribe to secure his continued allegiance to a party or his continued support of particular politicians. It hardly occurs to him that in a sense he is bribing himself with a part of his own income. Of course this case leaves open the question of the justice of the tax and of the failure of the state to provide suitable technical safeguards to prevent evasion. Unjust or ill-constructed tax laws do not, indeed, justify corrupt action on the part of individuals, but they do transfer part of the moral guilt to the state. Other instances of veiled corruption readily suggest themselves—the intrigues of banks to secure the deposit of public funds, the devices employed to escape tenement-house, sanitary, or life-saving inspections, the appropriation by officials of government supplies or services as “perquisites” of office, and so on.[19]
Besides material inducements almost every object of human desire may tempt to corrupt action. Social position, personal reputation, office, power, the favour of women, the gratification of revenge—all these have been artfully adapted by corruptionists to bear with the greatest weight upon the tempted individual. Far more often, however, temptations of this kind originate within. They are the more dangerous because they prevail with men of much higher type than venal voters or boodling aldermen. But it will be objected that these are not necessarily objects of corrupt desire; that on the contrary they are currently recognised as part of the necessary driving power of political and other human activities, and praised as such by contemporaries and historians alike. The point is well taken in so far as it is maintained that such rewards are not necessarily sought by corrupt means. So far as that is concerned, the money which a corrupt legislator accepts is not bad in itself, nor need it be put by him to other than very creditable uses. The major evil lies in the deflection from duty which the money bought, in the resultant deterioration of character and in the contagion of bad example. Precisely the same thing may be said of the so-called higher objects of desire to gain which men sell their political honour. This distinction goes far toward disposing of the objection that such motives are not corrupt because they are currently recognised as necessary and beneficial in political life. So far as their effect is the reinforcement of the influences which make for the performance of public duty there is no reason why they should not be regarded as good. To regard them in the same way when they have a directly contrary moral effect is a pernicious perversion of a true idea.
Nevertheless the fact must be faced that the public conscience is often deceived on this point; and that as a consequence practices are tolerated which will not bear the most cursory moral inspection. Sometimes these practices become so common that all consciousness of wrong-doing is lost. On this ground it might be maintained with reason that they are not corrupt according to the conventional morality of the time. It is this condition of affairs which makes the subtler aspects of corruption so much more dangerous and so much less easy to cope with than common bribery. Yet even here the outlook is hopeful. Corruption in its more insidious forms is not the vice of low intellects. Hence in many cases education of the public conscience will either suffice to banish these forms of evil or may be depended upon to find the legal means of destroying them. Our own recent experience with the abolition of railroad passes is a case in point, although passes can hardly be considered an extremely subtle means of corruption.
Corruptionists usually offer rewards of one kind or another to those whom they wish to make their tools. What if the same end is compassed by means of threats or injuries? Obviously the latter may be far more potent in a given case than the most alluring promises. Sometimes the two are employed together, enormous bribes being offered for compliance, and political, social, or financial ruin threatened for recalcitrance. Coercion of the latter sort may be used either to procure corrupt action or to check honest action. It is related of Governor Folk that shortly after he embarked upon his relentless prosecution of the St. Louis boodlers, the latter combined and employed detectives to delve into every act of his life from the time of his boyhood in Tennessee up to his election as Circuit Attorney. Absolutely nothing was developed that could be used against him. The incident is suggestive, however, of what may have happened in the case of other men who desired to be honest politically but were handicapped by the fear of some forgotten scandal, perhaps of a purely personal character, in their past lives. Thus the strength of the moral condemnation visited by our society upon offences of a certain sort may become the most potent weapon in the hands of an unscrupulous boss or clique. The question remains whether the neglect or misperformance of duty procured by threats or injuries comes properly under the definition of corruption. The case is similar to admitted corruption in that both involve the idea of personal advantage. Morally, however, it would seem more reprehensible to seek or accept something desirable as the price of disregarding public duty than to disregard it under the threat of deprivation of some advantage already secured by honest effort. In the latter case the individual who is coerced may deserve some sympathy, but the individual who uses coercion adds a very ugly form of blackmail to the general guilt of his act. Whatever answer be given to the question of definition raised above, it is worth noting that in speaking of corresponding virtues a distinction is made. Honesty in politics is insisted upon, but so also is courage. “It is, of course, not enough,” writes President Roosevelt, “that a public official should be honest. No amount of honesty will avail if he is not also brave.... The weakling and the coward cannot be saved by honesty alone.”[20] To this it might be added that under existing conditions courage in the sense of power to attack or withstand, must be coupled with an almost perfectly clean record in every way to be available as a political asset of any value in the fight against corruption.
V. Just as the advantages sought by corrupt action may shade off from the more to the less material, so also the personal interest involved is susceptible of numerous gradations from egoism to altruism. It may be entirely selfish, as in the case of a bribe credited directly to the bank account of the bribe-taker. It may be extended to include the welfare of relatives—a form of corruption so common as to have acquired a name of its own. It may be broader still, appearing as favouritism to friends. Finally, it may be so extended that the individual interest is merged in the interest of certain groups, such as the party, the church, the labour union, the secret society, and so on. The state is by no means the only sufferer by this process, any more than it is the only social group afflicted by corrupt practices. An official sentimentally mindful of the needs of Mother Church may cheerfully consent to burden the public treasury with a large part of the cost of maintaining an orphan asylum mismanaged by ecclesiastical officials. Political influence may be brought to bear upon Rome to secure the creation of a new American cardinal acceptable to certain influential classes in this country. Desire to placate the labour vote has paralysed the employment of the police power by governors or mayors to put down violence during strikes. And labour leaders, seduced by promises of office, have consented to misrepresent and betray their followers. Complementary illustrations of this sort might be cited indefinitely.
It is not maintained that the larger part of the interrelations of social groups is tinged with corruption. Directly the contrary is more nearly true. Thus the interests of the state and of the family are so largely coincident that the latter is frequently spoken of as the unit of the former. Nevertheless family interests may be cultivated very greatly to the detriment of political life. Many flagrant examples of nepotism and the all too prevalent neglect of the duties of citizenship to cultivate those of the family circle are cases in point. It is no mere coincidence that one of the most soddenly corrupt municipalities in the United States is peculiarly distinguished as the “City of Homes.” Again, a business man may be vastly more efficient as citizen or public official because of his experience in business, but, on the other hand, he may make use of this experience to plunder the state, or he may allow himself to become so thoroughly engrossed in money-making that others plunder it with impunity. Knowledge gained by social intercourse with parents may enable the teacher to perform his work with far greater discrimination as to the individual peculiarities and needs of the children under his tuition, but it may also tempt him to gross favouritism and toadyism.
In discussing cases of corrupt action procured by inducements not directly material in character it was pointed out that current moral opinion does not clearly recognise the evil involved. Similarly it may be indicated that many of the less somber nuances of corruption resulting from the selfish interrelations of social groups hardly deserve condemnation, because they are not commonly recognised as deflections from duty. This may be conceded so far as the present conditions of morals is concerned; but under any sharper analysis than is currently employed the element of corruption contained in such actions is manifest. The difficulty of the situation is enhanced by the fact that it is extremely hard to separate and define duty and self-interest in many of the relations of social and individual life. Nevertheless the effort must be made. We must distinguish and define economic interest, family interest, public interest. We have for our guidance the great general principle: “Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” It is no valid plea in avoidance that it is hard to distinguish the things that are Cæsar’s and the things that are God’s. Rather would it seem to be enjoined upon a robust morality incessantly to search the heart regarding all the details that arise in following the commandment.
The most perplexing questions that arise in this interrogation of duty spring from the conflict between fundamental and general moral ideas and the customs of various social groups. It is considered entirely allowable and laudable, for instance, that a father should encourage his son to succeed him in business, even if the business be not his but that of a corporation in which he is simply an official. Many of the means employed to this end—education, travel, apprenticeship, and so on—are beyond reproach. Others involve gross favouritism and disregard of the merits of employees not connected with the family. The most noteworthy point involved in this illustration is that a procedure which passes without question in business and family circles is recognised as reprehensible in politics. From this discrepance in social judgments it follows, however, that the man who has made a success in politics may find it very difficult to see anything but the far-fetched morality of the “unco-guid” in the proposition that he may not provide places in the public service for his relatives and dependents, just as the man who has been successful as a merchant or manufacturer is in the habit of doing in his store or factory.