Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/72

 to perpetrating an ordinary common act of dishonesty was also a grafter, for the service which he performed even if it had been otherwise square was far less in proportion than the remuneration he received.

We have a university regulation to the effect that no organization is permitted to hold an entertainment with a view to raising money to be divided among its members. When the members of our dancing clubs, therefore, turn their cash balance into their own individual pockets they are receiving profit contrary to authority and are guilty of graft. Sometimes, perhaps, a practice like this is established so gradually and goes on so long that it loses its original significance and seems to become a legitimate commercial enterprise.

There is another sort of graft which contemplates a special privilege or looks for favors through relationship or acquaintanceship where a man has given little or nothing for what he expects in return. A student is sometimes accused of "working a graft" when all that is meant is that because of his nearness to an individual or his connection with an office or an organization he may be receiving favors to which he might otherwise not be entitled. If Jones is chairman of the Prom Committee, then Brown who is his roommate, even though he has done no work to merit preferment, expects to fall heir to some sort of soft job where the payment will at least equal if it does not exceed the labor. Fraternity men in authority or with appointing power are not at all likely to forget the needy or the eager brother when their jobs are being partitioned out. If Tom Jones is managing the student opera it is to be expected that