An illicit commission or profit, particularly in connection with a political job. Hence GRAFTER and GRAFTING. The word, as thus used, apparently comes from the rogues’ dictionary. Bartlett quotes the Nat. Police Gazette, unfortunately not supplying a date: “Scotch Moll is making out good grafting on the 8th Avenue cars.”
1896. The roadster proper is distinguished from the tramp by having a “graft,” or in other terms a visible means of support.—C. W. Noble, ‘The Border Land of Trampdom,’ Popular Science Monthly, l. 255 (Dec.). (N.E.D.)
1909. It is bad enough to be trapped at all, but it is not written in the book of graft that you walk right up to the deadfall and allow yourself to be shoved in…. Graft was all right, but gambling had to be on the level, among friends.—N.Y. Evening Post, Jan. 11.
1910. They have seen the great practitioners of “graft” in San Francisco exposed and even punished, and … the same men triumphantly reinstated by the all-powerful “machine.”—The Times, May 2, p. 11.
