The term high grading in forestry, fishing and mining relates to selectively harvesting goods, to “cut the best and leave the rest”. In mining, it can also be a term for theft.
Famous quotes containing the words high and/or grading:
“[F]or women, like tradesmen, draw in the injudicious to buy their goods by the high value they themselves set upon them.... They endeavor strongly to fix in the minds of their enamoratos their own high value, and then contrive as much as possible to make them believe that they have so many purchasers at hand that the goods—if they do not make haste—will all be gone.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“The only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes.... It seems to have favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment.”
—Claude Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908)