Commandments in Politics 109 



they have contributed heavily to campaign funds; 

 will permit loose and extravagant work because a 

 contractor has political influence; or, at any rate, 

 will permit a public servant to take public money 

 without rendering an adequate return, by conniving 

 at inefficient service on the part of men who are 

 protected by prominent party leaders. Various de 

 grees of moral guilt are involved in the multitu 

 dinous actions of this kind; but, after all, directly 

 or indirectly, every such case comes dangerously 

 near the border-line of the commandment which, in 

 forbidding theft, certainly by implication forbids the 

 connivance at theft, or the failure to punish it. One 

 of the favorite schemes of reformers is to devise 

 some method by which big corporations can be pre 

 vented from making heavy subscriptions to campaign 

 funds, and thereby acquiring improper influence. 

 But the best way to prevent them from making 

 contributions for improper purposes is simply to 

 elect as public servants, not professional denouncers 

 of corporations, for such men are in practice usu 

 ally their most servile tools, but men who say, 

 and mean, that they will neither be for nor against 

 corporations; that, on the one hand, they will not 

 be frightened from doing them justice by popular 

 clamor, or, on the other hand, led by any interest 

 whatsoever into doing them more than justice. At 

 the Anti-Trust Conference last summer Mr. Bryan 



