New-York tribune., 1877-08-23
TIE CUSTOM HOUSE AGAIN.


The third report of the NewYork Custom
House investigating Commission is most re-
markable document For many years the real
reformers among the Republicans of this city
have been protesting against the very abuses
which this Commission now holds up to light.
They have been complaining that the public
money was wasted the Civil Service debased,
the business of politics made dishonest, and
commerce oppressed by bands of weighers,
gaugers, inspectors and other officials, appoint
ed not to collect the duties, not to execute the
laws, but to do certain party work In the IN
terest of certain factions. Inspectors who had
nothing to inspect, weighers who never weighed
anything clerks and gaugers whose principal
function was TO read the newspapers and talk
politics, were all paid out of the public funds
for their services to individual politicians
But when the newspapers exposed these
wrongs, the friends of the President denied
them and treated complaint and remonstrance
as an act of treason to the party. And so
the wrongs would have gone on, getting
worse and worse all the time, if President
had not come into power who believed that
the party could not afford to be corrupt and
shameful and thievish, and who resolved con-
sequently to submit the condition of the Gus
tom House to strict, non partisan scrutiny
In it's previous reports the Commission has
treated different departments OF the Custom
House with so much moderation, fairness and
practical sense that we have learned to trust
in its judgment. What then must we think OF
the condition of the weigher's department
which has drawn from these able and impair
tial gentlemen such a sweeping and unqualified
censure? In other offices the Commission dis
covered many cases of laxness, incompetency,
and even corruption, and In all parts OF the
service it found a much larger force than the
work justified. These abuses it proposed to cor
rect by various changes and reductions. But
the weigher's and gauger's departments are so
hOpelessy and radically bad that there is no rem
edy to propose except instant demolition. Mr..
JAY and his associates recommend that every
weigher, weigher's foreman and weigher's
clerk, without solitary exception, shall be
turned out, the weighing districts abolished,
and the whole service reorganized; and in
view of the evils of the present system they
believe that the change should be made lmme-
diately. 1t would have been difficult to de-
scribe the condition of the service IN more
graphic language, or to pass n severe judg-
/
verdict is, however, the facts cited appear to
be an ample justification of it. Weighing, in
the Custom House sense, is an organized sys-
TEN of double plunder, of which the Govern
ment and the merchants are equally the VIC
| tins Each district is In charge OF welgher
who draws salary of $4,000 year, but
does not weigh anything, his duties being trans
mitted to a foreman. The weighers foreman
draws salary of 81, 200 year, and does not
weigh anything, but turns over the work to
seven or eight laborers. The labOrers receive
| forty cents an hour, and do not weigh any
! thing. but take figures from the city wcighers
or from the foreign marks Oh the goods. Then
there are numerous clerks who receive sal
aries of 81 200 year, and do nothing for it,
| leaving the duties to substitutes who are rated
AS laborers at forty cents an hour. A large
proportion of the laborers finally, do nothing
except draw their pay; and, in word, the
entire department seems to be organized only
to enable party workers of a certain low class
to draw salaries and talk politics. But they
drive a pretty lively business in levying ile-
gal charges upon the merchants. and they have
a regular schedule of impositions which it is
not easy to distinguish from blackmail.
Now we commend this report to the dissat
! isfed country Republicans who are greying
over the disesabllshment of the machine"
| In their quiet and vrtuous villages the Federal
: office holders, perhaps, are good citizens, ac-
tive. intelligent and devoted to the party, and
| il seems hard that the party should not have
the benefit of their zeal and experience in or
/ ganlzing the campaign. But il Providence
and the General Government had given them
| the boon of a seaport and Gus
/ tom House, they would understand the case
little better. With us the machine is
an apparatus like this Weigher's Depart
ment, and its products are scandals and
corruption and loss. These fellows render no
service to the party commensurate with the
price that is paid them, and if they could per-
form twice as much political work as they do
the party could not afford to buy it. OF course
the present incumbents, who are l0afing about
the docks and other resorts cOnsecrated to
craftsmanship, can be discharged, and we can
try to put honest men in their places and in
sist upon their doing the work they are paid
for. But if the old system of managing party
politics by the Custom House is to prevail, we
shall accomplish little by changes in the per-