Yet, when all is said, is not this thing, which the moral sense of civilized men pronounces shocking, only a development, one may say a logical development, of practices which have long been known and tolerated? There would seem to be only a difference in degree of turpitude between bribing one’s way to an order for cannon and paying out money, directly or indirectly, to secure general legislation which means money in a private citizen’s purse. This latter process has been not merely winked at in this country; it has been thought the regular and reputable thing to do. It has almost been honored. At least those who have profited by it have been honored. For years it was the vicious custom of corporations to group under “legal expenses” sums paid out to influence the legislature or Congress. Of one man prominent in his party, long in public life, and influential there, it was said that his motto, in politics as in business, was, “If you want anything, go and buy it.”
Such things were once far too common. They are frowned upon now, and we may believe that they are passing. It is necessary only to refer to what was done year after year in the matter of the protective tariff. The relation between campaign contributions and desired rates in the tariff bill was so close that it was hardly an exaggeration to say that the manufacturer put his coin in the party-treasury slot and drew out the customs duty he wanted. It seems certain that this habit of the “good old times” is disappearing before the spirit of the better new time. Yet evil is persistent. It is protean and recurrent. With all the gains that have been made, it is still true that the pecuniary view of legislation is too often met with. We laugh at “going in for the old flag and an appropriation,” but there are ways of corruption subtler than the blatant patriotic. In connection with too many bills and projects of law the questions are yet asked, “What is there in it for me?” “Who is putting up the money for this?”
Cases of outright legislative bribery are rare. In the few that do come to light or are suspected, proof of guilt is exceedingly difficult—how difficult, recent events at Albany have shown. But it is not the coarse methods of the purchaser or huckster in legislation that we need to guard against so much as the more insidious forms of swaying public legislation to private advantage. Too often, in connection with projects of law, a distinct “interest” appears. And frequently it is a moneyed interest. Movements that are artfully given the appearance of being spontaneous or voluntary are discovered to be secretly financed for secret purposes. The press is sometimes approached as well as legislatures and Congress. Sinister ends are craftily disguised. The very elect are occasionally deceived.
What is the remedy? It must be mainly moral. Against these anti-social practices the full power of social condemnation must be massed. The senses of men need to be sharpened until they can deny the truth of the cynical saying, “Gold does not smell.” Some gold does. And as against a private “interest” in legislation, there must be asserted, as the one standard, a broad State or National interest. Lacking that, no bill should be exempt from the severest scrutiny to expose a possibly selfish backing. That general principle established, and the further truth being insisted upon that no man shall be permitted before a legislative or congressional committee to be a judge in his own cause, the motive and the mischief of money-prompted legislation would be greatly diminished.
ONE WAY TO MAKE THINGS BETTER
THE FUNCTION OF HIGH STANDARDS IN LITERATURE AND THE ARTS
AT first thought, it seems like mockery to recommend to a world of social unrest and of shifting ideals, a world that for the most part is struggling for three meals a day, the efficacy of music, letters, and art to ameliorate its condition. “Emerson in words of one syllable for infant minds” will not reach below a certain intellectual stratum. Beethoven for the people seems a contradiction of terms. There are times when, despite the crowds at the museums, Michelangelo and the Greek marbles seem to have as little influence upon the stream of humanity as rocks upon the current of a river that flows past them. The cry for the elevation of the race, which is the dominant note—the Vox Humana—of our time, the hope that we may all move up together, is a logical development of the Christian idea and the most creditable aspect of the new century. The whole world is reaching for sun and air. The ambition of the wage-earner is a counterpart of nature, as Lowell reads it into his “June”:
“Every clod feels a stir of might,
An instinct within it that reaches and towers,