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
To attempt the adequate discussion of all the forms of economic
corruption would require extended treatises on the labour problem,
the trust problem, banking, transportation, insurance, and many other
special subjects. The limitations of the present study exclude anything
beyond a few general observations. It may first be noted that many of
the abuses which are now undergoing the process of sanitation were
the result not so much of corrupt intention as of ignorance and the
relatively unlimited character of the competitive struggle to which
reference has already been made. They emerged long before the era of
consolidation, and are therefore not to be attributed solely to big
business. For many years prior to the Chicago slaughter house exposures
of 1906, for example, unclean meat was sold both by large packers and
by country butchers. Small producers were and are largely responsible
for impure milk and sweatshop clothing. Petty landlords as well as
extensive holders of real estate have built unsanitary tenement houses
and overcrowded them with renters. The neglect of transportation
companies to install safety devices for the protection of passengers
and employees has in the very nature of the case been a corporation
offence. On the other hand small as well as large mining operators
have sinned in this way, and small as well as large manufacturers
have exploited child labour. Betrayal of fiduciary relationships has
naturally occurred most frequently and most disastrously in enterprises
of large capital, although by no means confined exclusively to them.
Indeed there would seem to be reason for believing that in certain
ways consolidation has aided in bringing about the correction of some
of these evils. It centres them in a few large establishments, often
in a single district of no great size, where by their very magnitude
abuses force themselves upon a sluggish public attention. Consolidation
also makes it appear that the interests of a few selfish owners are
being pursued at the cost of the general welfare. This at once enlists
popular support for attacks upon abuses, and is a factor well worth
comparison with the defensive strength of massed capital. For these
reasons the cleaning up of the meat industry probably proceeded far
more rapidly after the Chicago exposures than would have been the case
if the effort had been made some years earlier during the period of
many scattered local abattoirs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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