is a good profit in
sight.

The papers and some people are always ready to find wrong motives
in what us statesmen do. If we bring about some big improvement that
benefits the city and it just happens, as a sort of coincidence, that we
make a few dollars out of the improvement, they say we are grafters.
But we are used to this kind of ingratitude. It falls to the lot of all
statesmen, especially Tammany statesmen. All we can do is to bow our
heads in silence and wait till time has cleared our memories.

Just think of mentionin' dishonest graft in connection with the name of
George Washington Plunkitt, the man who gave the city its magnificent
chain of parks, its Washington Bridge, its Speedway, its Museum of
Natural History, its One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street Viaduct and its
West Side Courthouse! 1 was the father of the bills that provided for
all these; yet, because I supported the Remsen and Spuyten Duyvil bills,
some people have questioned my honest motives. If that's the case, how
can you expect legislators to fare who are not the fathers of the parks,
the Washington Bridge, the Speedway and the Viaduct?

Now, understand; I ain't defendin' the senators who killed the
eighty-cent gas bill. I don't know why they acted as they did; I only
want to impress the idea to go slow before you make up your mind that a
man, occupyin' the exalted position that 1 held for so many years, has
done wrong. For all I know, these senators may have been as honest and
high minded about the gas bill as I was about the Remsen and Spuyten
Duyvil bills.

Chapter 16. Plunkitt's Fondest Dream

The time is comm' and though I'm no youngster, I may see it, when New
York City will break away from the State and become a state itself. It's
got to come. The feelin' between this city and the hayseeds that make
a livin' by plunderin' it is every bit as bitter as the feelin' between
the North and South before the war. And, let me tell you, if there ain't
a peaceful separation before long, we may have the horrors of civil war
right here in New York State. Why, I know a lot of men in my district
who would like nothin' better today than to go out gunnin' for hayseeds!

New York City has got a bigger population than most of the states in the
Union. It's got more wealth than any dozen of them. Yet the people here,
as I explained before, are nothin' but slaves of the Albany gang. We
have stood the slavery a long, long time, but the uprisin' is ne