The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1906-01-26
Interesting Paper Read BY
Senator A. 0 Eberhart.
SOCIAL SCIENCE CLUB TOPIC
He Discusses Various Forms OF the
Pernicious Practice; Booding
and Bride Taking.


at the meeting Tuesday evening:
1t is with a feeling considerably
mixed with misgivings that L attempt
to discuss the subject of public and pri-
vate graft assigned to me by your COM
mittee In the first place my spare mo-
ments available for preparation have
been extremely limited, and in the Sec
ond place there are no grafters willing
to discuss the subject from an expert
mental standpoint, so that my princi-
pal source of information has been
some general reading and observation.
Very few attempts have been made to
define what is actually meant by the
term graft and whatever efforts have
been made in that direction cannot cas-
lily be reconcied. One mistake has been
made in trying to narrow down the
meaning of the term so as to practical
" coincide with the offense generally
known as eXtortion by public officers.
This is merely one form of public graft
well exemplified by the Ames admins
tration in Minneapolis. Some writers
distinguish between graft and that form
of bribery known in slang phraseology
as Doodle In effect the difference is one
merely of limitation. the former being
Il generic term and the latter specific
one. The official CRATER holds up the
general public for private gain and the
boodler holds up the wealthy corpora
ton for the same purpose. Doodle is
merely one form of public graft and
public graft itself covers merely a por-
ton of the subject under discussion.
4 =.
its briefest. and yet most comprehensive
and adequate, definition, when applied
to the business world of today, is plainly
and simply business dishonesty. The
word was formerly a slang term, but Is
now used by nearly all modern writers
and speakers in defining and describing a
large number of Illegal, immoral, and
vicious practices connected with the
government of our larger cities. While
the division of the subject into public
and private graft is unimportant, since
it has reference merely to the manner
of committing the oifense, and not so
much to its nature. causes, or effects,
such division is convenient for the pur-
poses of this paper and VIII be followed.
Governor Folk of Missouri in an add
dress delivered at Springfield, Ohio, dur
ing the recent political campaign, gives
the following definition:
THE word graft is of such recent or
igin that it is as yet underlined in the
dictionaries in the sense in which it is
now generally used. The--boodler sells
his official vote or buys official acts con-
trary to law He is CRATER, but a
CRATER is not necessarily boodler.
Grating may or may not be unlawful
1t is either a special privilege exercised
contrary to law or one that the law it
self may give. Special privileges are
crafts and should be hateful to all good
citizens"
Public or official graft is such eXer-
else of official authority, influence OF
position by a public officer as will re-
suit, either directly or Indirectly, in
any personal profit, favor, or preferment
to the officer in question or other par
ties in interest, which is not permit
ted by just law, good morals, and clean
conscience, and which results in any
other than square deal between man
and man. In other words, public graft
is merely dishonest business methods
applied to political affairs for the pur-
pose of personal or individual gain. Pri-
vate graft is the application of dishon-
est meUnous in business enterprise for
the purpose of eXacting unreasonable
and excessive profit. Owing to recent in
vestigations, the opinion seems to be pre-
valent, that grating is a modern oc-
cupatiOn, and so modern, that the most
recent dictionary does not even give the
meaning of the word graft in the sense
here used. While admitting the degen-
Grafton of the word, it must not be for
gotten that grating itself has been
known under various other names since
the beginning of history. The scrip
lures tell us, that Esau sold his birth
right for a mess of pottage, that JOS
Ishmeelites for twenty pieces of silver,
eph was sold by his brothers to the
and that Judas Iscariot betrayed his
Lord and Savior for thirty pieces of the
same coin. The world of graft today
does not differ very much from that of
centuries ago. Perhaps the manner is
a little more refined and the practice a
little more extended in application, but
the results are the same. Sometimes, it
Is true, the modern inventive genius has
contrived a ''modus operandi'' within the
lcitft VI Tic Nfitteu INV, DuI Tie Oh
jects and the results are in every case
incompatible with the idea of a square
deal between man and man.
No one has read Lincoln Steffens not
able series of articles in McClure's on
the political corruption in st. Louis.
Minneapolis, Pittsburg, Philadelphia,
Chicago and New York, and the press
reports on the conspiracy in the postal
department, the grating of Captain
Carter and other army officers. the
charges preferred and sustained against
United States judges and senator's, and
the grating in connection with the cot
ton and tobacco crop reports, without
feeling of apprehension as to the con-
slant increase of political graft, and
no one. has followed Thomas Lawson's
dramatic articles in Everybody's, Miss
Ida Tarbells vivid story of Standard Oil,
the discussions in the public press of in
flated stock values. and the record of the
recent insurance investigation in New
York, without being stirred up by their
revelations of an enormous system of
private grating, but while the exist
encc of such a state of affairs is to be
deeply regretted, its disclosure is nm
questionable blessing in disguise. The
New York Journal of Commerce COM