He began life as a driver of a cart, then became a butcher's boy, and later went into the butcher business for himself.

How he entered politics he explains in one of his discourses.

His advancement was rapid.

He was in the Assembly soon after he cast his first vote and has held office most of the time for forty years.
In 1870, through a strange combination of circumstances, he held the places of Assemblyman, Alderman, Police Magistrate and County Supervisor and drew three salaries at once--a record unexampled in New York politics.
Plunkitt is now a millionaire.

He owes his fortune mainly to his political pull, as he confesses in "Honest Graft and Dishonest Graft." He is in the contracting, transportation, real estate, and every other business out of which he can make money.