Around the turn of the century George Washington Plunkett challenged the reformers of American city politics who blamed the ills of large cities on political organizations or machines such as New York City's Tammany Hall. Plunkett proposed that the honest graft of these machines was the oil that kept these machines and government in motion. His honest graft included exploiting privilege information such as buying public land earmarked for development and selling it again at huge personal profit. This book combines historical narrative with historical documents. Terrence J. McDonald is the author of Inventing Urban Politics: The City and the State in American Political Development, 1880-1980.