Essay - A Life of Honest Graft—the Life and Times of George...

A Life of Honest Graft—The Life and Times of George Washington Plunkett

The political machine created at Tammany Hall by Boss Tweed of New York City during the Gilded Age of American politics and ***** Industrial Revolution has become synonymous with ***** corruption. At the beginning of the book on ano*****r ***** Hall politician, introduced and assembled by the historian William L. Riord*****, ***** Washington Plunkett offers an apparently self-serving Tamm*****y style distinction between honest graft, or illegal political corruption for personal profit, and dishonest graft. He states "Everybody is talkin' these days about Tammany men growin' rich on graft, but nobody thinks of drawin' the distinction between honest ***** and dishonest graft. There's all ***** difference in the world between the two. Yes, many ***** our ***** have grown ***** ***** politics. I have myself. *****'ve made a big fortune out of the game, and I'm gettin' richer every day, but I've not gone in for ***** graft - blackmail*****' gamblers, saloonkeepers, disorderly people, etc. - and neither ***** any of the men who have made big fortunes in politics... There's an honest graft, and I'm an example ***** how it works. I might sum up the whole thing ***** sayin': "I seen my opportunities ***** I took 'em."

Despite ***** revulsion such a distinction might create in the heart of a modern reader and despite ***** assumption that political machines, as operated by ***** such as Plunkett were universally bad for American democracy, Plunkett's spirit also seems to comprise a cert*****in 'self made man' ethos that is commensurate with American capitalism ***** ingenuity, two other values ***** made the nation great. Like capitalism, the political machines, although conducive ***** graft, ***** enabled men such as Plunkett to come to ***** forefront of ***** democracy. Men such as ***** would not ***** come to power in other political systems, ***** because they were corrupt, but ***** they ***** uneducated commoners. ********** contrast, in the United States, the political machines gave political opportunities to the disenfranchised common men.

Through political machines as well, immigrants from despised groups were also empo*****d, as well as the working and nonworking poor. The political machines ***** as the democratic ********** of Tammany Hall mobilized groups such as the Irish ***** vote and to feel a stake in the system ***** did not when still living in ***** context of the royalist regimes of Europe. Plunkett may have profited wrongly through ***** ***** he also enabled others to politically and economically profit ***** his opportunism. Hence, his dist*****ction between honest and dishonest graft—dishonest graft in Plunkett's terms meant ***** that *****jured others through the dispensing of alcohol and the stirring up of violence. But honest graft merely meant profiting his ***** as ***** as political self economically in an illegal fashion—but still ***** ***** others ***** the use of positive, pro-immigr*****t legislation. A chicken in every pot for a vote still enabled families ***** Brooklyn to eat for a d*****y.

***** practical attitude towards his