“A Reign of Graft” from the December 28, 1907 Door County Democrat
A REIGN OF GRAFT
—————
“GRAFT” NOT A NEW WORD IN THE WORLD’S LEXICONS.
—————
OF HIGH AND LOW DEGREE
—————
Ignoble Practices That Are Condemned, But Recognized in Business—People Responsible for Their Existence.
—————
Graft is not a recent innovation. History of remote periods tell of it, though perhaps the word that designates it now may belong to the newly-created words, and may be credited to the category of slang. In the times of Moses and Solomon there were grafters, and the Egyptians and later the Greeks had their priests and their oracles, common grafts of the times. History is replete from beginning to the present with tales of graft and grafters. Without graft to add its zest, the work of the fictionists and the historian would be prosy reading. Graft lends its charm to “The Epicurean,” “Rasselas,” and the works of historians from Pliny down to the present would be woefully dead without the numerous recitals of the doings of quacks, charlatans and grafters in general. Who has not been charged with the tale of the “diamond necklace,” and what reader of history has not laughed over the other operations of Cagliostro?
Perhaps never in the past has graft been reduced to the science that it is now. It is so closely interwoven in the mesh of legitimate transactions that there is hardly a branch of business that is free from it. Alas, not alone is it found in commercial and financial affairs, but is abundantly in evidence in governmental transaction, national, state and municipal. Revelations of the methods of great corporations, the timber land frauds, countless railroad transactions, government buildings, construction of municipal improvements, etc., give a wide knowledge of the world of graft.
Like an unbroken chain it extends from the highest to the lowest in power. The greater the interests, the greater is the opportunity for the operations for the grafters. The small-fry politician lives by it. The big-gun in congress adds to his prestige and his bank account by it. It appears that it is only a matter of degree between the grafter who stands on the street corner and hawks his wares and the man of honor who holds place in the United States senate; between the policeman on the beat who cautiously takes a dollar to close his eyes to the doings of the lawbreaker, and the man of millions at the head of some mail-order house, or monopoly who can rob the masses high-handed six days in the week and teach a Sunday school class on the seventh.
Graft teaches an ignoble lesson. It is a creator of the hypocrite, and the heretic. It is a poison that benumbs the finer qualities of manhood, and strifles all that develops the spiritual.
Yet God reigns; immutable laws exist and it is poor philosophy, indeed, that teaches that such qualities as sincerity, goodness, and other virtues are merely creations of the wind. They are real, living, lasting, eternal truths that cannot be downed. Graft may exist, and have its baleful influences; yet in the end will be victorious.
D. M. CARR.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
[The Epicurean: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/49332/pg49332-images.html
Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/652/pg652-images.html
Cagliostro: The Splendour and Misery of a Master of Magic: https://books.google.com/books?id=Ke00AAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
The affair of the diamond necklace, 1784-1785: https://en.chateauversailles.fr/discover/history/key-dates/affair-diamond-necklace-1784-1785
The spelling of “strifles” was ordinary at the time.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government is titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”. It will disappoint quacks across the United States. At the same time, https://gettrumpmemes.com is a reminder that certain other forms of corruption will be left unchecked, or even promoted.]
Posts related to financial corruption:
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/financial-corruption