raisin'?

The Wall Street banker thinks it shameful to raise a department
clerk's salary from $1500 to $1800 a year, but every man who
draws a salary himself says: "That's all right. I wish it was me."
And he feels very much like votin' the Tammany ticket on election
day, just out of sympathy.

Tammany was beat in 1901 because the people were deceived into
believin' that it worked dishonest graft. They didn't draw a
distinction between dishonest and honest graft, but they saw that
some Tammany men grew rich, and supposed they had been
robbin' the city treasury or levyin' blackmail on disorderly houses,
or workin' in with the gamblers and lawbreakers.

As a matter of policy, if nothing else, why should the Tammany
leaders go into such dirty business, when there is so much honest
graft lyin' around when they are in power? Did you ever consider
that?

Now, in conclusion, I want to say that I don't own a dishonest
dollar. If my worst enemy was given the job of writin' my epitaph
when I'm gone, he couldn't do more than write:

"George W. Plunkitt. He Seen His Opportunities, and He Took
'Em."

Chapter 2. How to Become a Statesman

THERE'S thousands of young men in this city who will go to the