The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-12-18
NEW. NAME, OLD PRACTICE.

a word, deflecting 1t from it's original Significance and putting a new mean ing to it, is graphically shown in our use of the word graft" and the gen eral, almost unanimous use of 1t by writers and speakers. Almost any child can tell us what the word means ordinarily, or what it has heretofore Rbeen used to express. but the new use for 1t as applied to finance has at once we are almost led to wonder that it was not adopted long ago.
 If we should say that graft means stealing we would only partially de- fine it, however alike the result may be. Obtaining money by embezzlement or forgery is not called stealing but the effect is the same, so far as the victim is concerned. He loses his mon ey through the unlawful acts of oth- CTS, even. though it may not actually be stolen from his pocket or his safe. What then is graft and grating? Mir. Frederic Upham Adams refers to graft as "extorted profit from an off
 
 pIoyment. It is the purchase price of an unfair favor; an accepted bribe in consideration of which the tender is permitted to violate or evade the law" Edward Atkinson says: "Grafting is the use of power and position to extort money: it is generated in privilege, patronage and protection" Thomas N.
  the National Municipal League, wrote thus, taking a more general view of the subject: Grating is peculiarly the crime of young community and a young nation. It is a passing phase of criminality that must be met and overcome. It is the measles and scar let fever of national childhood. Ma tions have lived through it, but they have also died of it. and will die of it if the virus is not destroyed before it accomplishes fully its dealy work"
 Is it altogether new in practice, al- though under a different name?? We are told by one authority that the tribute levied by the soldiers of an cient Carthage lost 75 per cent of it's substance by percolation through the hands of the generals before it reached the hands of the Emperor" so we see that they understood how to do 1t many centuries ago, by whatever name they may have known it. It is not doubted tha1 the decline and fall of the Roman empire was largely due to the exercise of what we now know as graft, and nnnfa aRain from There has been stealing in all ages, and as far back as we can look in the records of nations we learn of men who have attained wealth and position by taking mercenary advantage of places of trust and honor. There have been those who, like Walpole, de- tended corruption as a conservative force which tended to protect vested rights. Alexander Hamilton is on re- the convention which framed the con- stitution of the United States as in- dorsing in part Walpoles position, and certain of his critics claims that he made a practice of the theory. Ger tain it is that during the seven des- perate years when we were struggling for our national independenceeN there were not wanting those who in devious ways fattened on the public revenues. Our soldier forefathers went ragged and hungry because contractors and bribed officials had stolen the funds raised for the support of the men who fought at Saratoga and Trenton"
 In our own day there Is SO much of 1t going on that there is no need to single out cases. It is in politics and in finance. in business and in official life. It flourishes in high places as well as in low ones. and from the Senate of the United States down to the smallest municipality it gets in it's