Honest & Dishonest Graft. According

Honest & dishonest graft. According to Plunkitt, the difference between honest and dishonest graft is simply that honest graft lies in seeing opportunities and taking them. Plunkitt gives the example of property that he bought that, hearing a certain location will be in demand, he proceeds to buy the property before later selling it at a higher price than before. What Plunkitt was doing, in this and similar cases, was investing his money in areas that would later be in demand and, therefore, proceed for a higher price.

According to Plunkitt, most politicians get rich the same way rather than through robbing the government by dishonest graft, I.e. By profiteering from their political activities and diverting money that is supposed to be for the government into their own pockets, by gambling, or by blackmailing certain institutions. Plunkitt also sees raising wages as a kind of honest graft since he (and other who do so) makes himself popular that way thus receiving votes.

I happen to agree with Plunkitt in the first instance (regarding investment), but think that raising wages should be implemented for reasons other than for solely gaining popularity. Plunkitt seems to imply that were he not in a political position, he may not accord fair salary / benefits. I also think that penalizing certain institutions is not 'blackmail', as Plunkitt calls it, but a way of regulating their concerns. Plunkitt, wishing to profit from these organizations, may have refrained from fining them. I find Plunkitt's reasoning disturbing. Section 2.

Plunkitt & drinking Plunkitt sees drinking as detrimental to the person who wants to make a success of it in life. According to him, successful businessmen, including politicians, are temperate. They may sell liquors to others, in order to make a business, and they may befriend drinkers (cautiously) but they know that in order to retain they're thinking and calculating abilities and in order to attain positions of prestige, they had better let liquor alone.

Plunkitt provides many examples of this, from the successful politicians of Tammany Hall to the Bowery leaders and the most successful saloon keepers who understand that temperance is a business deal. Section 3. Plunkitt & political party bosses in the Democratic Party Plunkitt thinks that the Democratic Party should reserve itself to studying human nature rather than confine itself to studying politics and theories of politics from books.

People are most persuaded by those who talk down to their level and address them in practical form living with them and understanding what they are going through rather than quoting at them from books. Plunkitt, accordingly, sees that the Democratic party has a future ahead of it as long as the political party bosses would get down to the level of the masses and speak to them in their tongue. He also urges the bosses to abolish "iniquitous and villainous civil service laws' that are effecting jobs and corporations.

With the bosses doing this he sees uprightness and order restored not only to the Democratic Party but also to the country as a while. Section 4: Plunkitt's Patriotism It seems to me that the Plunkitt was the type of man whom Theodore Roosevelt was after with his big stick and gentler words. Plunkitt's gist from beginning to end centers on money and he addresses politics from that point.

Rather than serving for the good of the people, he starts off his memorandum by discriminating between honest and dishonest graft, telling the people how he makes his money -- through betting on property -- and ends off quoting Croker (" a real Tammany statesman") who says that: "I'm in favor of all kinds of money -- the more the better." See also his section on Civil Law, where he deems it a waste of time for students of politics in engage in studying politics as subject.

Plunkitt avows his repugnance towards theories and towards laws that seek to regulate Big Business and, over and again, advises politicians how to accumulate more money and how to perceive their task as lying within that field. Politics, in other words, is instrumental towards acquisition of money and prestige, and the needs of the people and the Nation -- which should be uppermost to the genuine politician take secondary place, if at all, towards Plunkitt's own avaricious and narcissist goals.

If Plunkitt -- with his corrupt English and greedy morals, as well as apathy towards state of the Nation and justice -- could serve as politician and be considered a prominent one, no wonder Roosevelt opposed politicians in general and Tammany Hall in specific and no wonder that he fought against the big businessmen of his day. Politicians and businessmen were one and the.