Corruption in American politics and life

by Robert C. Brooks

In addition to the perverted class ideas current in the lower political ranks there are other causes of the astounding garrulity which prevails regarding corrupt practices. One of these is the exaggerated vanity which all penologists note as a common trait of criminal character. The most adequate explanation, however, is to be found in the fact that so many of the offenders of this sort are allowed to escape the penalties of the law. If corruption even in its grosser forms were as certain of punishment as burglary or forgery, its still unterrified votaries would speedily learn to keep their mouths shut. One almost amusing consequence of the large degree of immunity they enjoy at present is the maudlin sympathy expressed by confrères when an occasional unlucky rascal is fairly caught in the net of the law. Well they know, these friends of his, that he is no more guilty than a score of others who go scot free. Often the untoward event is made the subject of denunciations on the flagrant injustice involved, and if the gang is particularly impudent its next accession to power is pretty apt to be marked by the complete rehabilitation of the “martyrs” who suffered during the reform uprising.

As a result of the reckless and often exaggerated gabble of the grafters, sensational newspapers and magazines find it an easy matter to keep their columns filled continually with highly spiced political exposures. In all probability comparatively few out of the total of corrupt transactions that actually take place are thus made public, but the prominence given these few may easily lead to overestimates of the extent of this evil in our political life. Undoubtedly, also, our practical political leaders are sometimes accused of offences in which they had no part. Inefficiency, as we have seen, is very common and very similar in appearance to corruption. No great reportorial or editorial skill is required to dress it in the garb of the latter. The constant reiteration of stories of this kind creates as well as meets a popular demand. Ordinarily a saving sense of the exaggeration and partisanship indulged in by a section of the press leads readers to make the necessary discount in forming their opinions of the published accounts of corruption. At times, however, the popular craving for pungent stories of corruption amounts to a positive mania. Such was the case in 1905, 1906, and 1907, as any comparison of the tables of contents of certain magazines and papers of that period with previous years will abundantly show. On the other hand there can be no doubt that a considerable part of this literature of exposure and denunciation was substantially accurate, and that its publication was a service of high merit. That it was also profitable is no reproach: society is the gainer when instead of ostracism and punishment it provides rewards and honours for those who attack real public abuses. In not a few cases where corruption was thus charged by journalists subsequent investigations before commissions and courts left no doubt of the existence of vicious practices, and led to reforms of a most beneficent character.

Extremely deplorable as must be the effect of false accusations inspired by selfish motives, a policy of the widest publicity offers great advantages over one of suppression and silence. Better fifty exposures, ten or even twenty of which are misleading, than blind concealment of official misdoing. Disproof of false charges is comparatively easy and when effectively made redounds to the prestige of the official or individual who has been unjustly assailed. As for those newspapers and periodicals which flagrantly abuse their privilege, it is seldom that they altogether escape penalties in the form of loss of influence if not of circulation. If penalties of these kinds can be made effective press censorship and lese majeste laws, such as exist in autocratic governments, need never be resorted to in America. From this point of view the horror frequently expressed by continental publicists at the corruption existing in the United States appears rather equivocal. Bad as some of our political conditions may be, we at least deserve credit for our willingness, nay, our determination, to hear the worst about ourselves. Certainly there would seem to be greater hope of improvement under our policy than in a country whose chief national hero used the enormous income from the sequestered estates of the House of Hanover to fill the news and editorial columns of the “reptile” press with lying articles favourable to his policies, and in which only recently the facts concerning the Camarilla surrounding the Emperor were so cautiously and partially brought to light. And it is well known that in Russia the censorship was deliberately used by provincial bureaucrats to conceal their misdeeds from the knowledge of the Czar.

As between countries which muzzle the press and those which allow liberty it is inevitable, then, that the governments of the latter will be charged far more openly and frequently with corruption. Citizens who are shocked by the accusations thus trumpeted forth may be pardoned some apprehensions for the continued stability and success of their institutions. The sentiment does them more credit than callous disregard or brazen Chauvinism, and is altogether more likely to be productive of good works in the future. But it may easily be carried to an extreme. National shamefacedness is not a virtue. In forming a judgment of the extent of contemporary corruption the garrulity of politicians, the sensationalism of the press, the popular demand for highly spiced accounts of official sinning should all be taken into account. A cynical representative of yellow journalism, replying to the criticism that his paper indulged too much in lengthy and lurid accounts of crime and immorality, remarked rather sententiously that “sin is news.” The statement is only partially true. Most sins are too common and too petty to have any news value. Only those offences that to current estimation seem large and dangerous are given prominence and headlines. If Turkey and China enjoyed the blessings of a free press it is hardly probable that the papers of those countries would give much space to what, according to Western standards, would be frankly considered corrupt and extortionate practices on the part of their pashas and mandarins. Such practices would be so common, so universally known, and so little in conflict with contemporary Turkish and Chinese political morals that they would excite little interest and comment. If then, as in our own papers, accounts of atrocious crimes and accusations of corrupt practices are given the same large measure of prominence it means simply that both kinds of offences are considered to possess a high degree of news value. Puritans may deplore the popular taste which finds interest in such reports, but we cannot deny the existence of that interest. Primarily it exists not because sin as such is news but because offences which are considered large and dangerous appeal powerfully to the popular mind.

To the normal reader, of course, the fascination of such accounts is the fascination of repulsion, not of attraction. In attempting to explain the pornographic note in modern French literature, Professor Barrett Wendell makes a most ingenious suggestion that is not without its application to the present argument.[107] With the exception of a class forming a small part of the whole population, French family life is conspicuously pure. Why, then, asks Professor Wendell, should fathers and mothers who themselves practise every conjugal virtue delight in novels and dramas that dissect all the prurient phases of divorce, adultery, and sexual laxity? Simply because such topics take them out of themselves by presenting situations quite foreign to their experience and hence strikingly interesting. In some degree the same answer applies to American public interest in corrupt practices. The great mass of business and professional men, and of politicians as well, who sincerely attempt to live up to the best standards of their vocations nevertheless read and hear with avidity spicy accounts of the malpractices of their disreputable colleagues. Nor can this interest on their part be denounced as morbid so long as it leads not to palliation and imitation but to reprobation and efforts for the wiping out of abuses. Would the situation be really improved if instead of the daily grists presented to us by the newspapers we should read nothing but accounts of the straightforward methods which are employed in the great bulk of political, business, and professional transactions? The habit might be exemplary but it would certainly be supremely dull. While it is not true that all sin is news there would seem to be nothing to regret in the fact that neither are all virtues. Of the two the former undoubtedly has the greater news value. But the reason for this is that relative to the sum total of everyday transactions the more heinous offences against morals and law are to a high degree unusual. Virtue and ability, on the other hand, are so commonplace that it requires a most exceptional display of either to secure public notice. Considerable vogue has been enjoyed recently by the term “smokeless sin,” as applied to certain forms of social evil-doing which although large and dangerous are also so subtle and complicated that responsibility for them can easily be avoided.[108] Students of sin would do well to remember, however, that now as always virtue as a whole possesses the quality of smokelessness to a much more eminent degree than vice.

Admitting that political corruption exists among us to a disquieting extent the point is frequently made that the vigour with which it has recently been exposed and attacked is in itself evidence of moral health and harbinger of ultimate victory over the evil. Such exposure and attacks, it is said, signify the development of higher ideals measured by which practices formerly tolerated are now condemned by public opinion and will later be condemned by law. As to the emergence of higher ideals there can be no doubt, and so far we have just ground for encouragement. Reform sentiment as a whole, however, can scarcely be accepted at its full face value. A considerable part of the denunciation which accompanies it is as much exaggerated as the corresponding campaign “literature” and “oratory” of the practical politician. Thus the volume of clamour is augmented and the difficulty of correctly estimating honesty in public life increased. There are always those who deliberately attach themselves to reform movements solely because they foresee victory at the polls with office and emoluments and other less legitimate opportunities for themselves. In other words while ostensibly fighting corruption the motives of such persons are at bottom corrupt from the start. Bandit Mendoza of the Sierras, that eminent socialist of Shaw’s creation, was not entirely wrong in maintaining that “a movement which is confined to philosophers and honest men can never exercise any real political influence: there are too few of them. Until a movement shows itself capable of spreading among brigands, it can never hope for a political majority.” In some American cities charges have even been made that corporate interests which did not enjoy the favour of the gang or boss have contributed largely to “anti-graft” campaigns, their real purpose being to place themselves in a position to claim the favour of the “honest” administration elected by their efforts. Knowledge of corrupt transactions, discretely hinted at in the press, has been used in other instances as a sort of political blackmail to club the gang or boss into the granting of privileges to applicants who had hitherto been denied. The mere volume of clamour developed by reform movements against corrupt practices is, therefore, no certain index of higher moral standards. There is even danger that we may too complacently accept mere denunciation for real achievement. Nor can the work be deemed finished when popular uproar has secured new legislation, for laws, notoriously, do not execute themselves. Discouragement then too easily overtakes the rank and file of the anti-corrupt element; hence, in part, the spasmodic character of many reform movements. When every necessary deduction has been made, however, the fundamental strength and continued progress of the cause of honesty in politics is beyond question. Even the selfish interests that attach themselves to it prove this contention. It is true they bring no enthusiasm for higher standards as such, and also that the results of alliances of this character are often disheartening. Nevertheless the mere fact that such alliances are entered into by practical politicians is pretty strong testimony, coming as it does from men who are very little affected by considerations of sentiment, to the power of the sincere reform element which is pursuing no ulterior ends. In all cases of this sort the selfish politician is seeking to strike with the strength of others, and this strength must be reckoned with as a real factor, no matter what uses designing men endeavour to make of it. Here as elsewhere the counterfeit bears witness to the value of the genuine.

Whatever may be the extent of corruption in the United States it is under fire all along the line. Moreover we regard and attack as abuses practices which in other countries are considered free from reproach or even as pillars of the state. Comparisons to our disadvantage on the score of corruption are most frequently made with England and Germany. In England, however, the privileges of peerage, gentry, clergy, and the landholding class generally are enormous.[109] Land is assessed at a fraction of its real value, local rates are thrown upon the tenant, railroads seeking charters and cities seeking legislation to wipe out disease-breeding slums or to take over badly managed docks find themselves mulcted by special acts exacting excessive prices for the property taken, and the interests responsible for all these conditions sit enthroned in an omnipotent parliament. Landlordism has progressed to a considerable degree in the United States, to be sure, and we possess a more than plentiful supply of slum landlords. Property rights in realty are abundantly protected among us, but our landowners are very far from enjoying the class privileges or the social standing accorded them in England. Moreover when abuses arise in connection with their management, public opinion does not hesitate to express itself unmistakably, nor is corrective legislation difficult to procure. In Germany, which like England is frequently extolled for its high political morality, autocracy, aristocracy, Junkertum, and the swaggering military class are sacrosanct. Landtag and city councils in Prussia are elected under a three-class voting system which fills these bodies with agents of the landed and plutocratic interests and deprives the great mass of the people of adequate representation. Against these and kindred abuses has risen the menace of social-democracy. The prospects for peaceful reform in the near future are not altogether bright. Autocratic, aristocratic, and plutocratic rule is seated firmly in the saddle, and is not inclined to listen to proposals that it shall reduce its own powers. Special privileges exist in the United States, it is true, but they are always regarded as questionable, they must continually justify themselves to a majority of the whole people, they can never feel themselves secure in public opinion even if for the time being they have the support of law. “Grafting,” said Governor Folk of Missouri, “may or may not be unlawful. It is either a special privilege exercised contrary to law or one that the law itself may give. Special privileges are grafts and should be hateful to all good citizens.”[110] The statement is an unguarded one, but it is thoroughly typical of a deep-seated American tendency to suspect corruption in every special privilege, whether it be legal or illegal, whether it be condemned by a sweeping consensus of moral opinion or only by some reforming voice crying in the wilderness.

It is no part of this argument to assert that the rights and immunities enjoyed by the English aristocracy, for example, are corrupt. Under the definition earlier proposed this is clearly not the case. On the contrary these privileges have as yet the support of law, tradition, custom, public opinion, and public deference. A radical democrat might say that all this simply proves the blind ignorance of the great mass of Englishmen and the fatal ease with which they can be exploited by a horde of social parasites. From an unprejudiced point of view, however, we must concede the right of a people to govern itself according to its own lights. The English may be committing a monstrous political blunder in tolerating their aristocracy, but if they decide to do so that is their own concern, and the privilege so established is, both in morals and in law, beyond the accusation of corruption. Exactly the same defence may be made for the Prussian Junkertum and the German military class, or, for that matter, for the caste system of India. The development of new standards of public opinion, morals, and politics, in these countries may at some time bring their privileged classes under effective criticism; the conviction that they are socially harmful may gain ground; and out of this conviction may come reform movements designed to secure their abolition. Until that time, however, while we may perceive clearly enough the political ills entailed upon our neighbours by special privilege, we cannot denounce them as corrupt because they tolerate it.

It may even be conceded that in some cases the glorification of a class is in the best interests of the state as a whole. Feudal aristocracy was certainly functional and efficient, whatever one may think of its modern descendants. Considering Germany’s powerful neighbours and her extended frontier there is much to be said even for the privileges at present granted to her military class, however odious they may appear to the citizen of a non-militant country. One need not go far afield in search of illustrations of this sort. Under our tariff system advantages accrue particularly to manufacturers that are not entirely dissimilar to the special privileges referred to above. Protection was established, however, on the ground that while manufacturers might benefit primarily by duties on imports, the resulting advantages would be widely diffused, and the interests of the country as a whole advanced by this policy. It is possible that the majority was mistaken in so thinking, just as the English may be mistaken in thinking that the maintenance of an aristocracy is to their national advantage. Deeply as our protective system is entrenched, however, it has no such support as aristocracy in England, as militancy in Germany. It has continuously been criticised by very large minorities, and the only real basis of defence it possesses is the conviction of the majority that it is conducive to the welfare of the country as a whole. If it once loses this support its ultimate fall is assured. Other forms of privilege existing among us,—railroad interests, franchise interests, interests seeking land, timber, and mineral grants, or subsidies, and corporations generally,—are on the defensive to an even greater degree than the protective system.

The argument so far as it relates to special privileges may now be summed up as follows: Special privileges are not necessarily corrupt; they may be in the public interest and recognised as such. They exist in the United States, but are much more common in England and Germany. We, however, have chosen to regard all of them with suspicion and to attack many of them vigorously, charging them not only with corruption but with every other political crime in the calendar. Abroad they enjoy greater security and respectability. Even when they are assailed by English and continental publicists more deferential methods of attack are employed than we are used to in America. Rude words such as “graft” are avoided.[111] Hence in part the greater appearance of corruption which we present to Europe, and which we seem to confirm by the criminations and recriminations which issue from our own mouths. Mr. Frederic C. Howe is therefore right in maintaining the probability that “it is not so much in the badness, as in our knowledge of the badness, that America differs from the rest of the world.” Without underestimating the enormous power of the forms of special privilege which exist among us, and the difficulty of restraining and regulating them,[112] European nations may nevertheless find it a far more trying task to adjust the claims of their own widespread and deeply rooted forms of privilege when they come into conflict with the rising tide of democratic and socialistic sentiment. So far as privilege in autocratic, aristocratic, and clerical forms, is concerned we have every reason to be grateful that the fathers of the Republic long ago made away with it. They left the awful heritage of slavery, but privilege resting upon that basis has also been wiped out. We ourselves must face the power of the political machine and massed wealth, and we are facing it. Momentous as is the issue, we have, at least, the satisfaction of being able to rejoice, in the trenchant and essentially true words of Mr. William Allen White, that the United States is “a country where you can buy men only with money.”[113]