m tipped
off, say, that they're going to lay out a new park at a certain place.

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 plan public, and there is a rush to get my land, which nobody cared
particular for before.

Ain't it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my
investment and foresight? Of course, it is. Well, that's honest graft.

Or supposin' it's a new bridge they're goin' to build. I get tipped off
and I buy as much property as I can that has to be taken for approaches.
I sell at my own price later on and drop some more money in the bank.

Wouldn't you? It's just like lookin' ahead in Wall Street or in the
coffee or cotton market. It's honest graft, and I'm lookin' for it every
day in the year. I will tell you frankly that I've got a good lot of it,
too.

I'll tell you of one case. They were goin' to fix up a big park, no
matter where. I got on to it, and went lookin' about for land in that
neighborhood.

I could get nothin' at a bargain but a big piece of swamp, but I took it
fast enough and held on to it. What turned out was just what I counted
on. They couldn't make the park complete without Plunkitt's swamp, and
they had to pay a good price for it. Anything dishonest in that?

Up in the watershed I made some money, too. I bought up several bits of
land there some years ago and made a pretty good guess that they would
be bought up for water purposes later by the city.

Somehow, I always guessed about right, and shouldn't I enjoy the
profit of my foresight? It was rather amusin' when the condemnation
commissioners came along and found piece after piece of the land in the
name of George Plunkitt of the Fifteenth Assembly District, New York
City. They wondered how I knew just what to buy. The answer is--I
seen my opportunity and I took it. I haven't confined myself to land;
anything that pays is in my line.

For instance, the city is repavin' a street and has several hundred
thousand old granite blocks to sell. I am on hand to buy, and I know
just what they are worth.

How? Never mind that. I had a sort of monopoly of this business for a
while, but once a newspaper tried to do me. It got some outside men to
come over from Brooklyn and New Jersey to bid against me.

Was I done? Not much. I went to each of the men and said: "How many of
these 250,000 stories do you want?" On