Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/573

Rh mean and degraded, in view of their chances in the honorable competition of business life and of the absence of all serious temptation. As I believe the uprooting of these practices to be of the greatest moment to municipal reform, I beg to offer the practical suggestion that a change might be made in the laws punishing the crime. We have tried without avail laws making both briber and bribed equally punishable, because, as both are liable to punishment, both have the highest motive for secrecy—and evidence can hardly ever be obtained. We have also tried making the bribed alone punishable; and this has not availed because the briber is usually a man of too much position to be willing to tell the truth and appear in his true light. He is of that higher grade of criminals which can be trusted to believe in honor among thieves. I suggest the remaining alternative of making punishment apply only to the briber, for though the bribed would not always peach, he is of the sort that certainly sometimes would; and the briber, knowing the grade of man he was dealing with, would always regard him as a man who might; and would be apprehensive that when exposure did not follow, blackmail would; all of which would add new risks that very few monied men would dare to take. Moreover, in city government bribery there are usually so many of the bribed that the risks of exposure or blackmail would be immensely multiplied.

The fourth and the last which I have to mention of these explanatory states of public consciousness is the lack of sensitiveness to the evils of city government. The public conscience is not sensitive to the corruption of city government. Nor is it alive to the baseness of bribery. The public taste is not awake to the disorder and dirt and general ugliness of our cities. Public pride takes but little offense at those things which make our cities a reproach to civilization. The public mind is not yet fully alive to the excess of partizanship in city affairs; nor to the excess of partisanship in the newspapers, which in purely city affairs protect their parties when in office and keep them from serving the city at their best; and even deter many good men, by intemperate criticism, from going into city politics at all.