The amount of money appropriated by the Board of Estimate and Apportionment as the running expense of the city for the year 1909 is $156,545,148.14, which is $13,722,089.91 more than was spent last year. It may be fairly estimated that one-half of this amount is used to pay salaries of all city employees and the other half the yearly supplies, such as coal, books, stationery, printing, wagons, fire engines, rents, etc., etc. From all of the supplies furnished to the various departments, a commission of from twenty per cent. to twenty-five per cent. reaches the men higher up, taking a circuitous route to do so, but it gets there beyond the shadow of a doubt. This money is never given as a commission, but as a gift to the organization, so as to keep within the law. In round numbers these commissions will amount to not less than $12,000,000 a year. No one will deny that nearly all the Tammany employees of the city government pay into the organization yearly not less than twenty per cent. of their salaries. Sometimes they are assessed from five dollars and five thousand dollars, and if they refuse to pay, they are black-listed and afterwards “bounced.” Twenty per cent. of graft from the wages of city employees would amount to not far from $12,000,000 a year. Then there is enormous graft from the purchase of real estate, school houses and other buildings for the city, bridges, paving of streets, sewers, public improvements, etc, etc., $12,000,000 of which will eventually reach the house of grafters on Fourteenth Street. We have said nothing about the police graft, which, to use the most conservative figures, will amount to at least $20,000,000 a year. The larger part of this reaches the house of grafters and is used for the purpose of buying elections and paying idle retainers who work for the organization around a November election. In the collection of this graft, brewers, malsters, saloon keepers, merchants, builders, contractors, the great shipping interests of the city, dives, pool-rooms and baudy-houses all pay tribute. Even bootblacks, cabmen and push cart men have all to contribute to save themselves from petty annoyances. Using the most careful figures, from sixty to seventy million dollars a year is spent in graft. Gen. Bingham, in a newspaper article, estimates the city graft at a $100,000,000 a year. Our figures are less as we wish to keep on the safe side! Everybody knows that street railroads, gas companies and big corporations of every name can tear up our streets and leave them in a dangerous condition for months, but that could not be done without paying “graft” to some persons!