Word: corruption
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Dates: during 1900-1909
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...first speaker was E. J. Arnstine '13. The question is purely one of the practicality of the tax. If adopted, would the income tax work equitably? Both methods of imposing this tax are disastrous. The income declared would not be one-quarter of the usual amount. It would corrupt and demobilize the people as was done in England. The second method of obtaining the tax by assessors is obviously difficult. Would the freedom-loving Frenchmen submit to having their pockets searched? This was the cause of the French Revolution...
...find "graft," said Mr. Steffens, is to go to a "grafter" for it. The board of aldermen in every city of the country are corrupt, and betray the confidence of the people whom they represent. The American government no longer represents the whole nation, but only its worst and most unscrupulous part...
...reform have been proposed: by business, and by labor. The former is absolutely useless, for business is as rotten as politics. There is the same kind of treason in the insurance companies as in the legislature. Labor is equally unfitted for reform; the San Francisco labor government is as corrupt as any business enterprise. The old game of politics, the kind that Mr. Roosevelt plays, is one of compromise. The politician bought his position and kept it. Now the political aspirant should promise to follow out a definite program and make others promise and keep their word. The college...
...taxation is so defined geographically that a just system of taxation has in many cases become impossible, and great wastes in the various branches of the city administration are inevitable." One of the most important causes is that "the practices of corporations that need public franchises have been often corrupt." And finally, "legislative remedies for these evils have been hindered by a false theory that a city ought to be an independent entity managing all its own affairs, and accepting neither aid nor control from the state...
Self-government for the benefit of all the governed will be an idle dream until inside information about the facts of the government becomes possible. Monopoly of information must precede monopoly of franchise. When all men are looking, corrupt politicians walk quite as straight a line as college presidents. As the Independent said recently, in urging a permanent endowment for the Bureau of Municipal Research, "Attempts at reform have failed in New York and elsewhere because the Republican and Democratic Tammany Halls of our cities have had inside information and have been able to make black look white because...