Corruption in American politics and lifeBrooks, Robert C. (Robert Clarkson)
History
Corruption in American politics and life
Brooks, Robert C. (Robert Clarkson)
Political corruption -- United States; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918
Believers in the ultimate good resulting from a questionable
evolutionary process might point in support of their faith to the
foregoing interpretation of the effects of our corrupt politics upon
the immigrant. Others will doubtless find it much too roseate. What
of those immigrants, they will ask, who were already fitted for the
proper performance of the duties of American citizenship? Doubtless
the number of such was large, particularly among our earlier accessions
from western Europe. Many of this better class of immigrants must have
been debauched by contact with corrupt influences, and even those who
rose superior to such conditions must have found it an uphill fight.
Even if instances can be cited where foreign masses subject to the
worst political management have nevertheless developed independence and
organisations of their own, it is seriously to be questioned whether
this development will continue. The new flood of immigration from
southern and eastern Europe may progressively deteriorate, or remain
a stumblingblock for a long time to come. There are some communities
of native white stock in the United States where the buying of votes
has continued through two or three generations, growing worse rather
than better, until at the present time it seems to have become a
fixed institution. In the opinion of many people a large part of the
negro vote is not only corrupt but incorrigibly so. Altogether the
facts are very far from warranting a reliance upon unaided evolution
to work out the problem of electoral corruption. Even granting that
the results already secured in this way are extremely favourable, it
is probable that much better results might have been secured had the
native American stock from the start lived up to the best ideals of
republican citizenship. The immigrant might, for example, have been met
and aided by institutions working unselfishly for his welfare, such as
the church, the school, or the social settlement, rather than by the
lowest grade of party politicians working largely for their own private
advantage. Doubtless this will sound like a counsel of perfection.
So it certainly is as regards the past, but none the less it would
seem our clear duty to take every care to educate properly for future
citizenship not only such foreigners as we shall continue to admit, but
also those of our own people who are exposed to corrupt influences.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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