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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 April 2009
Money in politics is a funny thing. By legend and cliché, money is the “mother's milk of politics,” that which keeps party machinery working and campaigns running. It is also the focus of generations of suspicion and complaint. From the advent of the “spoils system” in the early nineteenth century to the PACs and “soft money” of today, there appear to be few takers for the proposition that money does not stain what ought to be the majesty and purity of politics. Money, unlike the suffrage, introduces inequality among citizens. Money gives its favored candidates and policies an unfair advantage for the public's attention. Money is the appearance, if not the fact, of corruption.
1. Josephson, Matthew, The Politicos (New York, 1938)Google Scholar; Yearley, Clifton K., The Money Machines: The Breakdown and Reform of Governmental and Party Finance in the North, 1860–1920 (Albany, N.Y., 1970)Google Scholar. Representative of an older tradition in political science are Overacker, Louise, Money in Elections (New York, 1932)Google Scholar; and Heard, Alexander, The Costs of Democracy (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1960)Google Scholar.
2. Among others, Randall Barrow, John M. Duncan, Emmet D. Hehn, and William Bendle to Stephen Early (wire), 26 January 1937; and Early to Theodore Kingsbury, 28 January 1937, Official File, Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Democratic National Committee, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. The president's office could not accept such personal contributions, but those without an antilabor message received a supportive response and instructions to send the contribution to the DNC offices in New York.