Social corruption

“ CORRUPTION IN BUSINESS AND POLITICS No form of corruption can exist without reacting upon the life of the state. Pollution of the sources of public instruction defiles individuals and all the manifold non-sovereign social organisations, but it culminates in an infection of public opinion which directly contaminates the body politic. ”

“ The social advantages alleged to flow from political corruption are either illusory or minimal. On the other hand the resultant evils are great and real, although, no [Pg 38] doubt, they have often been exaggerated by sensational writers. Whether corruption be approached from the latter side, as is commonly done, or from the side of its apologists, the social necessity of working for its limitation is manifest. ”

“ But far in excess of this is the evil which corruption inflicts by destroying the confidence of men in their social institutions. In the field of politics this evil is particularly great because of the wide extension of governmental functions in recent times and the great possibilities which might be realised by further extensions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ultimately they became so rapacious that merchants feared to come before them, preferring to leave commercial differences to be settled by the arbitration of officers of guilds of which the business men themselves were members. Thus corruption of one social organ may lead to its atrophy and the corresponding strengthening of another social organ which takes over the functions of the former. ”

“ Contemplation of the general evils which may result from corruption suggests the possibility of eliminating it from social life. While such a condition of affairs may be looked upon as an ideal, it will nevertheless remain an ultimate ideal which can be approximated rather than realised, and that only by the most patient, determined, and continued effort. Every social organisation, as we have seen, presupposes the subordination in some measure of personal to broader interests. ”

“ One must guard oneself against too cheerful optimism in the premises, however. Reform forces armed cap-a-pie do not spring like unheralded knight errants of old into every breach at which social integrity is being assailed. Instead they can be developed only by persistent individual and associated effort and sacrifice. Moreover the problem of corruption, as we have seen, is a persistent one, the forms of which are ever changing and ever requiring new ingenuity and resourcefulness in the methods of social sanitation. ”

“ Corrupt practices are found to be limited in some cases to certain branches or spheres of government with consequences of varying degrees of danger to the national life. Or they may be limited in amount or percentage by various prudential considerations on the part of political leaders who, however, are far from being sufficiently restrained in this way as social welfare requires. While corruption thus appears [Pg 110] to be a persistent problem of social and political life it is far from being a hopeless one. ”

“ Unsupported charges of corruption are too frequently indulged in by practical politicians, reformers, and conservatives, the results being a popular moral callousness and a loss of social confidence which render all constructive work more difficult.
(4) Acts involving corrupt motives range in current social estimation all the way from heinous felonies to minor foibles. The view that there are only a few “corruptionists,” all of whom richly deserve criminal sentences and might receive them without unduly crowding our penitentiaries, is a grotesque misconception. ”

“ An apology for contemporary corruption based on such considerations may therefore be worthy of attention, provided, however, that it does not attempt to bind us to a purely laissez faire attitude in the presence of admitted and immediate political evils.
From the latter point of view political corruption may be regarded as a symptom, bad in itself but valuable because it indicates the need, and in some degree the method, of cure. Like pain in the physical economy it is one of the danger signals of the social economy. ”

“ If in many instances he is degraded by moral and political slavery to the practice of the basest vices it engenders—and that below the level of ordinary degradation—let us reflect that the corruption of the best produces the worst, and that habits which subsist only in relation to a peculiar state of social institution may be expected to cease as soon as that relation is dissolved. ”

“ The conclusion which the foregoing illustrations seem to warrant is that while corruption is a pathological condition which in an extreme degree may lead to social death, it is also susceptible to treatment which may bring about recovery with renewed and even enhanced vigour. Between these two extremes every degree of partial strength or weakness may exist in a social body as a result of the presence or after effects of corruption. ”

“ The city politicians know still better how closely blackmail and corruption hang together, in the social psychology, with the enforcement of laws that strike against the belief and traditions of wider circles. ”

“ With such circumstances confronting us, what shall be said of the alleged utility of the corrupt machine as prime defender of social peace? If we should conclude to recognise the gang frankly in this capacity any materials for the formation of revolutionary mobs that we may possess would [Pg 20] certainly be encouraged to increase the demands made as the price of continued quiet, and even to furnish a few sample riots from time to time as a means of enforcing their demands. In reality, however, corrupt political machines care very little for social welfare. ”

“ Those who so employ it cannot pretend that any general consensus of moral opinion supports their usage. No doubt many propositions for social change which are now considered extremely radical will gradually gain converts and will ultimately be enacted into law; but not all reforms can appeal unerringly to the future for justification. Institutions hotly assailed in times past have not infrequently outlived their detractors and developed new possibilities of social utility. The formation of modern nationality itself wore the appearance of corruption to many contemporary observers. ”

“ Corruption, then, is a social disease that may terminate fatally. Social death does not always occur because of it, but from the social point of view it is always a pathological condition. Few of the great tragedies of history involving the fall of nations or of mighty institutions can be explained fully without reference to the antecedent corroding influence of corruption. It had a part in the decline of Greece and Rome, in the Protestant Reformation, the overthrow of the Stuart dynasty in England, the partition of Poland, and the French Revolution. ”

“ Witness in current writing the frequent juxtaposition of the word corruption, used with reference to social phenomena, with such words as slime, filth, sewage, stench, tainted, rottenness, gangrene, pollution, and the frequent comparison of those who are supposed to profit by such corruption to vultures, hyenas, jackals, and so on. Side by side with the levity already criticised we accordingly find a usage which, however exaggerated and rhetorical it may be, appears to indicate a strong popular feeling against what are deemed to be corrupt practices. ”

“ It denounces every institution established for human development as a fraud. It stigmatizes law as the machinery of injustice; it sneers at society as hollow-hearted corruption and insincerity; it brands politics as a reeking mass of rottenness, and scoffs at morality as the tinsel of sin. ”

“ As soon as the State recognizes the right of existence of this dung-heap, by its toleration and organization, corruption hitherto hidden and ashamed raises its head and becomes more and more bold, even dragging public organs into its sink. ”

“ A country covered with schoolhouses, where the children of the poor are put upon an exact equality with those of the rich, is not distinguished for corruption. And yet in the name of this universal corruption you are appealed to to become also corrupt. This nation is substantially a hundred years old, and to-day the assessed property of the United States is valued at $50,000,000,000. Is that the result of corruption, or is it the result of labor, of integrity and of virtue? I deny that my country is distinguished for corruption. ”

“ Thus, among us, property of various sorts and property in general, government in certain forms or in all forms, marriage, the church, medicine, and law, and those who represent them, are all denounced by small or large groups as graft and grafters. And indeed one need not be a thoroughgoing radical to observe that in some instances narrow and selfish interests have crept into these institutions, warped their highest ideals and crippled their efficiency. There seems to be little justification, however, for the employment of the word corruption in such sweeping fashion. ”

“ It is not only that abuses without number prevailed, but the whole system of Government was an abuse, a sea of corruption without a bottom or a shore, an engine of robbery, crushing the life out of all industry. ”

“ There will probably always be some attempt at corrupt practices, more or less, as there will always be some highway robbery. But the extent of those corrupt practices, the more or less, and, therefore, the damage and danger arising from them, will depend upon the popular maintenance of that moral standard according to which corruption is branded as a dishonorable thing, condemned as a crime and treated as such. ”

“ Well, I declare to you that in all my experience I have found no society which has had elements of corruption like the United States. The children in the street are corrupt, and know how to cheat me. The cities are all corrupt, and also the towns and the counties and the States' legislatures and the judges. Everywhere men betray trusts both public and private, steal money, run away with public funds. Only in the Senate men take no money. ”

“ Nor in any reasonably moral community would they be likely to take direct bribes. It is time, however, as every one who lives under the rule of colonial politicians knows too well, that political corruption, in high places as well as in low, should be distinctly stamped as a crime, and brought under the regular cognizance of justice. ”

“ The French aristocracy, the army, the bourgeoisie, the church, and the press, are all in the market. Eloquent morality solicits corruption with the most impudent eagerness, and drives the hardest bargains. In France corruption has become the fashion; it is the law, the essence of politics, and it has almost become a necessity for the attainment of even honest purposes. ”

“ That most fearful picture of a corrupt community drawn by Curran in his description of the public pests of his day—"remaining at the bottom like drowned bodies while soundness remained in them, but rising only as they rotted, and floating only from the buoyancy of corruption"—seems, unhappily, destined to find its parallel here, unless public virtue and public indignation should awake to condemn and chastise the corruption which is tainting and poisoning the air around us. ”

“ Corrupt practices may begin in, and at first be limited to, the business world, but, as we have just seen, they are likely to overstep economic boundaries and become a menace to the integrity of the state. As such they must also be recognised and discussed as derivative forms of political corruption. ”

“ The worst scandals of the eighteenth century were relatively harmless by the side of this, which smirched executive, judiciary, banks, corporate systems, professions, and people, all the great active forces of society, in one dirty cess-pool of vulgar corruption. ”

“ Ready to put up thousands or any unlimited amount when it came to a question of bribery or the corruption of public officials, they were too deeply impregnated with the germs of covetousness, too much the slaves of greed, to chance the loss of a picayune, even though well aware that by reason of their complicity in his fraudulent operations they were completely at his mercy, and that their indifference to his fate was planting in his breast those seeds of hate and revenge whose harvest must be their own dishonor and downfall. ”

“ Our discussion and struggles about other great questions and principles will appear like a mockery and farce if we permit our public concerns to drift into that ruinous anarchy which corruption must necessarily bring in its train, because it destroys the confidence of the people in their self-government, the greatest evil that can befall a republic. ”

“ If in such cases we excuse and forget, why not also excuse and forget corrupt transactions that have been more than repaid by general brilliant conduct of affairs of state? No answer to this second question, however, can avoid the distinction that while certain kinds of personal immorality may affect the value of a man’s public service to an infinitesimal degree only, corruption in any part of his political career strikes directly at whatever efficiency he may possess as a public servant. ”

“ When it goes corrupt, when instead of protecting its members from every form of evil and disorder, it becomes an instrument of the forces of darkness, a tool of corruption, citizens have it as their inalienable right to demand a change in the existing order. ”