The Industrial Conflict in the Light of Revelation.
By Geo. W. Rine
In the parlance of popular slang the terms “graft,” “boodle,” “rake-off,” “pull,” etc., have become substitutes for the old, malodorous word bribe. The connotation of bribe (or bribery) is so broad that it requires all the foregoing vulgarisms to express its varied and diverse aspects. These few words of explanation are given by way of justification for my using these vulgar but graphically expressive terms in this discussion. The very fact that one can not pick up a newspaper without one’s eyes repeatedly catching these unsavory terms is evidence that the practise of bribery pervades society to an unprecedented extent. The venality which obtains in the business and in the political world has become so nearly universal, so notoriously patent, that one can hardly talk or write about it without falling into platitudes and trite commonplaces. The only justification for my writing upon a subject so uninviting is the duty of disclosing to the reader the vital connection of present-day venality with present-day fulfilment of inspired prophecy. No one denies that the commercial spirit is the characteristic, the dominant, spirit of our day. Mr. Lincoln Steffens recently wrote: “The commercial spirit is the spirit of profit, not patriotism; of credit, not honor; of individual gain, not national prosperity; of trade and dickering, not principle. ‘My business is sacred,’ says the business man in his heart. ‘Whatever prospers my business is good; it must be. A bribe is bad, that is, it is a bad thing to take; but it is not so bad to give one, not if it is necessary to my business.’” That these words express the sentiment cherished and practised by a very large percentage of the business men and politicians of the present day, is proved, not by what they say, but by what they do; and doing, you remember, speaks louder than saying. Most of us have long believed that bribery was a noxious weed that could not thrive in any soil but that of politics; that the field of politics was its only congenial home. For a year or more, Mr. Steffens has been investigating the political machines in the principal cities of the United States. He has embodied the results of his investigations in a series of articles contributed to McClure’s Magazine. These articles have commanded national attention. They have been a veritable revelation to thousands of the American people. He shows clearly that bribery, or “graft,” has become a connecting link between business and politics. The following citation from his article entitled, “The Enemies of the Republic” is a startling summary of the results of his intelligent and painstaking observations:— Every time I attempted to trace to its source the political corruption of a city ring, the stream of pollution branched off in the most unexpected directions and spread out in a network of veins and arteries so complex that hardly any part of the body politic seemed clear of it. It flowed out of the majority party into the minority; out of politics into vice and crime; out of business into politics; and back into business; from the boss, down through its police to the prostitute, and up through the practise of law, into the courts; and big, throbbing arteries ran out through the country over the state to the nation—and back. No wonder cities can’t get municipal reform! No wonder Minneapolis, having cleaned out its police ring of vice grafters, now discovers boodle in the council! No wonder Chicago, with council-reform and boodle beaten, finds itself a Minneapolis of police and administrative graft! No wonder Pittsburg, when it broke out of its local ring, fell, amazed, into a state ring! No wonder New York, with good government, votes itself back into Tammany Hall! They are on the wrong track; we are, all of us, on the wrong track. You can’t reform a city by reforming part of it. You can’t reform a city alone. You can’t reform politics alone. And as for corruption and the understanding thereof, we can not run ’round and ’round in municipal rings and understand ring corruption; it isn’t a ring thing. We can not remain in one city, or ten, and comprehend municipal corruption; it isn’t a local thing. We can not “stick to a party,” and follow party corruption; it isn’t a partisan thing. And I have found that I can not confine myself to politics and grasp all the ramifications of political corruption; it isn’t political corruption. Its corruption. The corruption of our American politics is our American corruption, political, but financial and industrial, too. Miss Tarbell is showing it in the trust, Mr. Baker in the labor union, and my groping into the misgovernment of cities have drawn me everywhere, but, always, always out of politics into business, and out of the cities into the state. Business started the corruption of politics in Pittsburg; upholds it in Philadelphia; boomed with it in Chicago, and withered with its reform; and in New York, business financed the return of Tammany Hall. Here, then, is our guide out of the labyrinth. Not the political ring, but big business,—that is the crux of the situation. Our political corruption is a system, a regularly-established custom of the country, by which our political leaders are hired, by bribery, by the license to loot, and by quiet moral support, to conduct the government of city, state, and nation, not for the common good, but for the special interests of private business. Not the politician, then, not the bribe-taker, but the bribe-giver, the man we are so proud of, our successful business man—he is the source and the sustenance of our bad government. The captain of industry is the man to catch. His is the trail to follow. Mr. Steffens has found that behind every political machine which deals in special privileges, selling them to the unscrupulous “captains of industry,” there is the “big business” machine. So behind the political “Boss” machine in New York and in Pennsylvania is the corporate wealth of those states. What Mr. Steffens asserts as to Missouri is true of a score of other states in which the “business interests” of the kind represented by the predatory trusts are dominant. One of the branches of the City Council of St. Louis is called the Municipal Assembly. This Assembly, the same writer informs us, was honeycombed with “graft” from center to circumference; the councilmen loaned the city’s money at interest, and the interest was converted into private bank accounts. City carriages were regularly used by the families of city officials. Supplies for public institutions found their way to private tables. The Assembly awarded the contract for city printing to one of its own members; to another member was awarded the exclusive right to furnish city dispensaries with drugs; and to a third was voted the sole privilege of supplying the poorhouse with groceries. It is said that men ran into debt to the extent of thousands of dollars for the sake of being elected to either branch of the Council. One evening, on a street-car going to the City Hall, a new member remarked that the nickel he had just handed the conductor was his last. The next day, as the result of a fat bribe, he deposited $5,000 in a savings’ bank. A member of the Assembly admitted to the Grand Jury that the “boodle” he had received from a certain combine netted him $25,000 a year. A councilman confessed that he had been paid $50,000 for his vote on a single measure. With these St. Louis officials, bribery had actually become a joke. One evening, in the corridor of the City Hall, a newspaper reporter overheard the following little colloquy:— “Ah there, my boodler!” said Mr. Delegate. “Stay there, my grafter!” replied Mr. Councilman. “Can you lend me a hundred for a day or two?” “Not at present. But I can spare it if the Z—— bill goes through to-night. Meet me at F——’s later.” “All right, my jailbird; I’ll be there.” Soon foreign corporations came into the city to share its spoils, and home corporations were banished by blackmail. Franchises with millions of dollars were granted to rich corporations in return for bribe money without the city’s realizing one cent in cash. Several companies refused to pay blackmail and had to leave the city. Pay-rolls were padded with fictitious names. Work on public improvements was neglected, as the money voted for such work “went to the boodlers.” The corruptionists were backed by men of wealth and high social standing, who, because of special privileges granted them, felt constrained to support and shield the looters. “Men whose integrity was never questioned, who held high positions of trust, who were church members and teachers of Bible classes, contributed to the support of the dynasty,—became blackmailers, in fact,—and their excuse was that others did the same, and that if they proved the exception it would work their ruin.” At one time the city was kept in unbroken darkness for weeks, pending the payment of $175,000 in bribes on the lighting contract, and, when disgusted citizens went and inquired of the mayor why they could not have the lighting conveniences for which they had paid, they were coolly advised to look to the moon for light. “Boodling was safe, and boodling was fat.” A serious and sober writer has actually affirmed that everything St. Louis owned was for sale by the officers elected by the people. The regularly-organized “grafters” who rule in that city have sold $50,000,000 worth of franchises and other valuable municipal assets. This estimate was made by an intelligent banker, who said that the official “boodlers” got less than one tenth of the actual value of the things they sold, but were satisfied because they got it all themselves. The political organization, in New York City, known as Tammany, has long ago become a synonym of “Graft.” The items representing the money that this gigantic cabal of political spoilsmen stole from the people of that city, “are so incredible,” says Mr. Steffens, “that I hesitate to print them.” A reputed Tammany leader himself told a friend that in one year the police “graft” netted more than $3,000,000. During a period of thirty-six months these “boodlers” appropriated $400,000 a month in the shape of “graft” from gambling resorts and poolrooms alone. “Saloon bribers, disorderly house blackmail, policy, etc., etc., bring this total up to amazing proportions.”5 The yearly budget of the Metropolis is about $100,000,000, and, tho the facilities for “looting” that are afforded by the expenditure of that amount are enormous, and the opportunities for “take-offs” boundless, this sum does not represent one-half of the resources for “graft” when Tammany is in power. “If Tammany could be incorporated, and all its earnings, both legitimate and illegitimate, could be gathered up and paid over in dividends, the stockholders would get more than the New York Central bond and stock holders, more than the Standard Oil stockholders, and the controlling clique would wield a power equal to that of the United States Steel Corporation. Tammany, when in control in New York, takes out of the city unbelievable millions of dollars a year.” Is there any wonder that its leaders are all rich, and that Tammany is proverbially liberal in its division of the “graft”? In reference to Mr. Croker, the notorious Tammany leader of many years, Mr. Steffens writes: “He sold judgeships, taking his pay in the form of contributions to the Tammany campaign fund, of which he was treasurer, and he had the judges take from the regular real estate exchange all the enormous real estate business that passed through the courts, and give it to an exchange connected with the real estate business of his firm, Peter F. Meyer & Co. This alone would maintain a ducal estate in England.” Mr. Croker has the effrontery to admit unblushingly that he was in politics for the sole purpose of replenishing his own coffers “all the time.” The Department of Buildings is an adjunct of the municipal government of New York City. This department affords well-nigh unlimited possibilities for political “graft.” $100,000,000 a year goes into building operations in New York. All of this, from tool-shops to sky-scrapers, is subject to very precise legal regulations, some of which are impracticable. The enforcement of all these is in the hands of officials of the Building Department. They pass upon all construction, private and public, at all stages, from the making of the plans to actual completion. “Architects and builders had to stand in with the department. They called on the right man, and they settled on a scale which was not fixed, but which generally was on the basis of the department’s estimate of a fair share of the value of the saving in time or bad material. This brought at least a banker’s percentage on one hundred millions a year. Croker, so far as I can make out, took none of this! It was left out to subordinate leaders, and was their own ‘graft.’ The Dock Board, another department of the city government, has exclusive and private control of the expenditure of $10,000,000 a year. Of course, this vast fund belongs to the people. But their public servants (!), the political ‘grafters,’ never fail to exploit this fund, and, as a result, millions of the people’s money finds its way into the private coffers of the ‘public servants.’” “Official Grafting” is the title of an editorial article, in the San Francisco Chronicle, of June 2, 1904. It says in part:— That the city administration is infested with graft in every department which the boss is able to control is perfectly understood in the community. It follows, as a matter of course, from the character of the officials. There is no way of stealing directly from the treasury except by appointing heelers to subordinate positions, who do not do the work which they are appointed to do, and who may or may not divide what they get with those who enable them to get it. A more promising field is in bribing those who have business with the city officials entrusted with control of the police power. In all cities the police department is now the source of most of the illicit revenue obtained by officials, and presumably it is the case in San Francisco. The Police Commissioners appointed by the boss, being of a caliber so trifling that no form of graft would be beneath their notice, the public is quite ready to believe the stories which freely circulate as to the evident favor shown to certain individuals connected with these shady lines of industry which the laws subject to police surveillance. Such stories are hard to prove, but they are believed because they correspond with the known character of the officials. Embassador Choate, in a speech delivered in New York several years ago, declared that the root of the evil of municipal corruption is the respectable citizen, socially well connected, possibly a pillar of the church, or distinguished for benevolence and public service, who, in his corporate capacity, as the director of a gas, steam, or street-railroad company, or some similar corporation dealing with public franchises, secures special legislation, and peculiar privileges by corrupting the servants of the public. He argued that we would never secure a clean administration of the city until we brought home their guilt to those reputable gentlemen “by branding them as what they are,—thieves,—expelling them from our clubs, driving them out of society, and casting them out of our church boards and vestries. . . . Bad as is corruption in the police department,—partnership of the police with proprietors of bad houses, gambling hells, and the like,—worse and more dangerous is the corruption which proceeds from this exploitation of the public by the ‘respectable’ element of society.” The speaker denounced the iniquitous efforts that were then being made to carry through the legislature at Albany, bills of the most nefarious character, conveying public property, and valuable public privileges to certain great corporations, notoriously street railroad syndicates, for nothing—bills so iniquitous that their promoters felt it necessary to conceal their object by methods of legislative and legal trickery. Rev. J. P. Peters, commenting upon Mr. Choate’s address, expressed the following deplorable truth:— We place legislative, judicial, and executive corruption by these corporations, who are the great corruptors, on a different footing from the relatively petty corruption of liquor dealers, and treat the men who stand behind this corruption with a courtesy and consideration which we do not extend to the despised liquor dealer and his brethren. And it is precisely because of this attitude of our high-toned public men, of our reformers, of our religious and social leaders, and of the press; that the evil doing of these men is vastly more dangerous to the public welfare than the evil doing of the liquor dealer, or the keeper of the gambling house or brothel. It is necessary, if we would eradicate corruption, as you argue, and as Mr. Choate has argued, that these “respectable” directors of corporations should be held up to the public opprobrium and scorn as thieves, receivers of stolen goods, and, above all, as traitors to their country, who are ready to bribe and debauch the government for the sake of private gain. The publishing house of McClure, Phillips, and Company has recently issued a book entitled, “The Shame of the Cities,” by Lincoln Steffens. The very titles of the chapters which the book comprises attest the universality of business and political corruption by the corporate wealth of the country. Note the significance of these titles: “The Shame of Minneapolis,” “The Shamelessness of St. Louis,” “Pittsburg: A City Ashamed,” “Philadelphia: Corrupt and Contented,” “Chicago: Half Free and Fighting On,” and “New York: Good Government to the Test,” etc. Read this book if you would know how deep-seated, how all-pervasive, how hopelessly chronic is the sin and crime of “boodling”—of bribe-giving and bribe-taking. Again I am constrained to repeat: “In the last days . . . men shall be . . . lovers of money, . . . lovers of pleasure.”—Paul. Note again the words of the Apostle James: “Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.” The prophet Isaiah, however, explicitly foresaw that the specific crime of which this paper treats would be terribly prevalent in the closing years of this “present evil world.” The very phraseology of the prophecy here cited shows it to be a last-day prophecy. I quote verses 14 and 15 of chapter 33:— “The sinners in Zion [in the church] are afraid; fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with the everlasting burnings? He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil; He shall dwell on high.” Ah, it is the “sinners in Zion,” professed Christians, says the prophet, who shall lend themselves to money-getting by the use of “graft,” by systematic bribery. It is those “having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof,” who, Paul declares, will be lovers of money “more than lovers of God.” How strikingly relevant to this discussion are the following words from the prophet Micah, found in the third verse of the seventh chapter: “Their hands are upon that which is evil to do it diligently; the prince asketh, and the judge is ready for a reward; and the great man, he uttereth the evil desire of his soul; thus they weave it together.” A. R. V. Verse 7 of the same chapter makes it evident that the prophet speaks of the time when the people of God are looking for the coming of “the God of my [their] salvation.” Referring to the time when God shall gather His people, David prays: “Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with bloody men; in whose hand is mischief, and their right hand is full of bribes.” Ps. 26:9, 10. Even the children on the street talk glibly of “boodle,” of “graft,” of “swag,” of “rake-offs”—of bribery. We are living in an age of “graft.” “It is in the air,” declares a noted writer. The vital question with you and me, dear reader, is, Do I despise “the gain of oppression”? Do I shake my “hand from holding of bribes”? Only those who despise such gain shall safely “dwell with the devouring fire”—the fire that shall devour the works of the devil. Only those “shall dwell on high.”