My presentation is on George W. Plunkitt’s Honest Grafting and Dishonest Grafting. I was interesting in this topic because I was searching through the index for a story to read and the word graft caught my eye. I didn’t know what grafting was so I looked it up and it pretty much means using bribery to gain power in politics or business.
I thought to myself how is grafting good? He describes grafting in his way but even after that I still believe it’s bad. I like to think of Grafting as a tiger pouncing. Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRWNMajaFSc . As you just saw there are steps that tigers have to take when they want to hunt. First it needs to find its prey just like Plunkitt needs to find a place to buy. He says “My parties in power in the city, and it are going to undertake a lot of public improvements.” As you can tell he is trying to find his “prey”. The next step in a hunt for prey is to see an opportunity and run towards the target and pounce. Plunkitt says “I see my opportunity and I take it. I go to that place and I buy up all the land I can in the neighborhood. Then the board of this or that makes its plans public, and there is a rush to get my land.” He saw his opportunity to buy land that the board is going to need in order make this project. And the final step is to land the killing blow in which the tiger gets its reward which is the prey. In Plunkitts grafting the board needed the land and he took advantage and bought up the land so he can make a profit from it. The board buys the land and Plunkitt gets his reward in the end just as the tiger gets its reward from its prey.