Whether or not “accounts Dr. and Cr.” are kept by our political organisations, a calculus of essentially the same character must underlie the determination of their policy.

On the spending, or political control, side of their ledgers the various heads are comparatively simple. Office holders must be kept in line, and to this end patronage, promotion, and the control of primaries are important. The direct use of money for bribes may play only a small part in this process; opportunities for auto-corruption may be left open in special cases, but personal and party loyalty and ambition can be relied on to a large extent. Back of the office holders of the hour, however, there are the constantly recurring necessities of election day. Party organisation must be kept up continuously, involving the reward in some way of swarms of assistants and hangers-on who cannot all be remunerated directly at public expense. At times votes must be bought, and repeaters, thugs, and ballot-box stuffers must be paid for their services. A heavy toll is apt to be taken out of the funds used for such purposes by every hand through which they pass on their way down. In addition to the expenditures already noted there are many other occasions, some of them quite legitimate in character, and others unobjectionable or even laudable, for the lavish use of money to secure party success and party control.

The situation which has just been described is so common that the only justification for repeating its description here is the necessity of completing an outline the other parts and interrelations of which are somewhat more obscure. In the gradual awakening of the American people to corrupt conditions existing in their government the first evils clearly seen were the abuses of the patronage and the defilement of the ballot-box. Civil service reform and corrupt practices acts (the latter term seems lamentably narrow in its original usage to the present somewhat more sophisticated generation) were the result. Later the presence of purveyors of vice immediately behind much of the prevailing electoral corruption was clearly discerned, and the battle on that score is still being waged. It is beyond question that our present local option movement is directed against the saloon not so much because it is a place where intoxicating liquor is sold, as because it is a political centre which did not know how to be moderate in its exercise of power during the days of its ascendancy. Still later the more secret relationship between grafting business and political corruption was laid bare. Renewed determination to impose the necessary measures of state regulation and, more specifically, the campaign contribution issue were the results. The problems presented by corrupt practices in connection with political control are still far from adequate solution. Reforms already achieved in the right direction, and still more the determination to press for further reforms, are the most hopeful features of the present situation. In our national government, for example, the civil service movement has reached a gratifyingly high development, but it still needs much extension and strengthening in our states and cities. We have some stringent legislation against ballot-box crimes, but, an election once settled, our tolerance on this subject is amazing and deplorable. Every act which simplifies our governmental machinery, which places responsibility squarely upon a few shoulders and provides means for enforcing it, which shortens our cumbersome ballots, which makes the primary accessible to independent voters, will help in the solution of the problem of honest party control.

Without undertaking a summary of the argument on the various forms of business and political corruption the same point may be made with regard to them that was made with reference to the corruption in the professions, journalism, and the higher education,—namely that the major forms of evil are recognised and savagely criticised. To an even greater extent legislative action has been secured against the primarily political forms of corruption. The fight for the regulation of business is the great unsolved problem of our time, but so far as it is successful we may expect not only more honest business practices but also a favourable reaction upon political life. A great many means may be brought to bear to secure honesty in the buying and selling operations of the state and to prevent the corrupt toleration of vice. Their success will mean that the corrupt political manager will find himself deprived of some of his most lucrative sources of income. A strong impression prevails at the present time that corruption funds in general are much smaller in amount than a few years ago. In part this is perhaps due to a change of heart, in part to the fear, intensified by recent events, of exposure. Perhaps, however, it is still more largely the result of a conviction that the “goods” could not, or would not, in the present state of public opinion, be delivered by the politicians. It is evident that the more successful we are in thus drying up the income sources of venal political organisations the smaller will be the resources available in their hands for the extension and perpetuation of their power of control.