Political Corruption
Henry George: The
Increasing Importance of Social Questions (Chapter 1 of Social
Problems, 1883)
[18] The evils that begin to appear spring from the fact
that the application of intelligence to social affairs
has not kept pace with the application
of intelligence to individual needs and material ends. Natural
science strides forward, but political science lags. With
all our progress in the arts which
produce wealth, we have made no progress in securing its
equitable distribution. Knowledge has vastly increased;
industry and commerce have been revolutionized;
but whether free trade or protection is best for a nation
we are not yet agreed. We have brought machinery to a pitch
of perfection that, fifty years
ago, could not have been imagined; but, in the presence of
political corruption, we seem as helpless as idiots. The
East River bridge is a crowning triumph
of mechanical skill; but to get it built a leading citizen
of Brooklyn had to carry to New York sixty thousand dollars
in a carpet bag to bribe New
York aldermen. The human soul that thought out the great
bridge is prisoned in a crazed and broken body that lies
bedfast, and could watch it grow only
by peering through a telescope. Nevertheless, the weight
of the immense mass is estimated and adjusted for every
inch. But the skill of the engineer could
not prevent condemned wire being smuggled into the cable. ...
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