Those Shocked at Exposures May Not Be Clean Themselves.
"A 'grafter' is one who makes his living (and sometimes his fortune)
by 'grafting.' He may be a political boss, a mayor, a chief of police,
a warden of a penitentiary, a municipal contractor, a member of a town
council, a representative in the legislature, a judge in the courts,
and the upper world may know him only in his political capacity; but
if the under world has had occasion to approach him for purposes
of 'graft' and found him corrupt, he is immediately classified as
an 'unmugged grafter'--one whose photograph is not in the rogues'
gallery, but ought to be. The professional thief is the 'mugged
grafter'; his photograph and Bertillon measurements are known and
recorded.
The world of graft is whereever known and unknown thieves or
bribetakers congregate. In the United States it is found mainly in
the large cities, but its boundaries take in small county seats
and even villages. A correct map of it is impossible, because in a
great many places it is represented by an unknown rather than by
a known inhabitant, by a dishonest official or an unscrupulous and
wary politician rather than a confessed thief, and the geographer
is helpless until he can collect the facts, which may never come to
light. The most that one man can do is to make voyages of discovery,
find out what he can and report upon his experiences to the general
public.
Within the last year or two it has become practically a synonym for a
thief who filches public money and money of large enterprises. It has
been so largely used in the public prints and periodicals, and more
recently in books, that it has spread abroad; and London and Paris
and Berlin, in referring to many American disclosures, adopt the word
without any translation. So today no American word is better known
either in this country or in Europe.
When men in office take a bribe and give away what does not belong to
them, it is more than the double crime of extorting and stealing; it
is treason. Graft is the worst form of despotism. It is a usurpation
of government by the forces of crime. There have been many virtuous
kings and honest feudal lords, but the despotism of graft never
founded its rule upon a semblance of the moral law.
Graft in its highest personification is the king of the American
nation in political, commercial and social life.