Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1877-04-28
The Custom House Investigation.

SCcIilog 10 lOTIll Il COlllIillSSlOu " III
vestigate the New York Custom
House. The object Of the inquiry
is, we presume, to discover where
and how the political part of this
machine can be amputated from the
business part. Report says that sew
eral gentlemen, among them Gener-
al Dix and Mr.. Royal Phelps, have
have declined to serve on the COM
mission. We do not severely blame
them, because if the inquiry is to
amount to anything it will impose
tedious and thankless labor on the
commissioners. Suppose the Presi-
dent shOuldrequest a hundred or two
of our leading importers and other
merchants to give privately and
briefly their ideas of needed custom
house reforms, we believe theanswer
he would receive would give him
much valuable leinfOrmatiOn, and that
when he had digested this he would
need no commission.
To put capable and experienced
business met at the head of the Gus
tom House, mep not entangled in
politics, and to require of them a
strict performance of duty, by them
selves and their subOrdinates, would
probably be the best way to reform
the abuses. If, in addition to this,
the President should follow the ex-
ample Ofthe Herald and open aCom-
plant Book, he would soon find
where reforms were needed. What
is wanted for the Custom House
army is new general. We donOt in
this mean to say anything even un-
complimentary of Collector Arthur;
but he has fought under a system
which the new President means to
abolish, and it is necessary to have a
new general, who ought to be allow
ed to select his SubOrdinates. No
body doubts that the work of the
Custom House can be done more
efficiently and with a much smaller
force than now. Nobody doubts
that if the Custom House is divorced
from politics it will be far more
economically and efficiently man.
aged. The President probably sees
as clearly as everybody else that if
he means to reform the civil service
he cannot go far before he comes to
the Custom House, and that he can
not leave that unrefOrmed without
abandoning the whole purpose of
reform. We believe he will not
be scared off by the machine politi-
clans; but we see also that he has
undertaken a big job, and that a
commission will hardly help him
through with it.
We cut the above from the New
York Herald. No one department
of the civil service is calculated to
test SO severely the sincerity of Mr..
Hayes in his promises Ofcivilservice
reform as the n. y. Custom House.
The Custom Houses of n. Y. and
New Orleans, were thetwO great To-
cuses ofcivils service corruption under
Gen. Grants administration. They
were used, first a means of reward
ing paTtiZan adherents, and secondly
as q centre for concentrating an ar
my of political agents whose princi-
pal duty was the manipulation of
State and Federal politics in the in
terest of the administration and es-
pecially in the personal interest of
Grant himself. The Ostensible du-
ties of the officers thus appointed
were quite subordinate to the real
purposes for which they were APP
pointed, which were to work for the
party and to enrich themselves. If
Mr.. Hayes set himself in earnest to
reform all this he will raise against
himself storm of opposition and
obloquy, and with Mr.. Sherman as
secretary of the treasury and there
fore as the chief agent in carrying
out his view we hardly anticipate
any very thorough changes. 1t re-
mains yet to be seen whether civil
service corruption is an accidental
complication in the Republican
party capable of elimination, while
the party goes ON the better for un-
loading, or an essential element in
its constitution, so thoroughly iden-
titled with its modes of procedure as
to be inseparable from it, and only
to be destroyed by means of the
of the party. We in
cline to the latter view. At least of
this we are are certain, that a change
in the Office of Secretary of the
Treasury must precede any real
in that department.
ED. CHRONICLE.