IV

CORRUPTION IN THE PROFESSIONS, JOURNALISM, AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION

THE wisdom of some quasi-philosophic counsellors of ambitious youth expresses itself in the aphorism that in this world there are as many doors labelled "pull" as there are labelled push." Without admitting the equality in ratio of the two kinds of avenues to material well being, it is undeniable that a great many of our social relationships are very commonly exploited by interests of a more or less directly personal character. Church membership, for example, may be maintained chiefly as a stepping stone to business, professional, or social success. Business men are overrun with solicitations for aid to church and charitable purposes under circumstances which suggest the discrete advertisement of their delinquency in case they do not contribute "according to their means," and the probable loss of custom in consequence. The charitable organisations themselves are imposed upon by unworthy applicants for relief who display a pertinacity and ingenuity calculated to destroy all faith in any trait of human nature except universal parasitism. Of course one should not look a gift horse in the mouth, but in the case of many presentations from inferiors to

superiors or from favour-seekers to men of influence the motives of the givers, and also at times of the recipients, are certainly not beyond suspicion. The ethics of the petty tipping system are dubious at best. Labourers "soldier on their jobs "; clerks appropriate office supplies as "perquisites "; there are tricks in all trades." To avoid conflicts in the kitchen good housewives frequently send bad servants away with excellent "characters." During hard time winters newspapers maintain free soup stations and publish the harrowing details of the poverty which they are relieving in such a sensational fashion that even the most guileless reader finds himself wondering whether any motive connected with self-advertisement or circulation reinforces the charitable sentiments of the journalist. On the other hand many a queer and clever scheme is devised to secure newspaper notoriety for some presumably deserving person or cause. The ways of authors with critics, and of critics with authors for that matter, are said at times to stand in need of criticism themselves. "Dead easy" professors and " “snap courses (of which, be it said with grief and contrition, every institution seems to have a few samples) are exploited by college students whose mental efforts in other directions are hopelessly inhibited by chronic brain fag. In short every person charged with administrative duties in connection with any social organisation, be it a business

house, a club, a church, a school, a charity, or what not, is familiar ad nauseam with the fact that tacit or overt efforts are constantly being made both by outsiders and insiders to procure suspensions of the rules or other unwarranted privileges and favours.

It would, however, be an unnecessarily harsh judgment to condemn all actions of the foregoing character as corrupt. If criticism is to be attempted it must be based on a full knowledge of motives in given cases, and these are not always apparent. Then, too, customs have grown up under the influence of which men act without analyzing the real nature of their conduct. Reflection would show, however, that, with the exception of conscious evil intent, the elements of corruption are present not only in the cases cited above, but in many others which are constantly being encountered in the course of the day's experiences. It is certainly an error to assume that all the grafters are engaged in "big" business or "big" politics. Let us not excuse in the slightest degree the misdeeds of great corporations, but, on the other hand, let us not forget that conduct of a precisely similar ethical colour is sometimes indulged in by labourers, clerks, small retailers, farmers, and others. The fact that corrupt or near corrupt practices are more common than people are ordinarily inclined to believe is significant in another way. There is always a direct relationship between the characteristic petty offences of a people and its

characteristic major crimes. Thus in a country given over to brawling, crimes of violence will be numerous. Chicane largely prevalent in every day affairs will certainly breed an atmosphere favourable to the perpetration of gigantic frauds. For this reason the minor forms of corruption which occur in the daily life of a people are worthy of much more attention than they ordinarily receive.

Let us turn now from the petty and dubious manifestations of a corrupt spirit to those larger and more directly threatening practices which have become subject to public criticism and in some cases to repressive legislation. The field thus ventured upon is so extensive and its features are so involved that no progress can be made in its discussion without classification. Yet any scheme of classification that may be attempted must encounter great difficulties. Individual judgments

vary widely regarding the importance or degree of danger to the public interest of various anti-social developments. Along certain lines corrupt practices have been exploited by journalistic enterprise with great pertinacity, while other suspicious areas are still largely neglected. As a consequence of the very difficulties which embarrass it, however, there is a certain justification even for a confessedly imperfect classification. A service of considerable importance may be rendered merely by bringing together in the form of an outline all or nearly all the more threatening forms of corruption in such a

way that some of their salient characteristics and interrelations are more clearly developed. Without therefore claiming finality for the following arrangement it would seem desirable to distinguish roughly two great fields of corrupt practices: first, corruption in professional life generally; and second, corruption in business and politics. The divisions and subdivisions of these two groups will be indicated later. Corruption in professional life will be discussed with some detail in the present study.1 Business and political corruption, the interrelations of which are very numerous and close, will form the subject of the following paper.

Corruption in professional life may be held to involve virtually all of our social leadership outside of business and politics. Apart from the specific services rendered by the various professions their principal practitioners are instinctively looked up to by the community for guidance. In a broad sense all professional men are teachers. Corrup

1

1 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.