The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1877-05-08
New YORK. Nav 3. 1877,

New YORK, May 8, 1877.
The Secretary of the Treasury surrenders to
the newsmen, and directs that the inquiry into
the management of the collection of revenue in
New York shall be an open show. That is
about as certain a method of impairing the
usefulness of the proceedings as human in
genuity could devise. Now we shall have a
column or two every day of wearisome AMI in-
consequent stuff, a patchwork of conjecture,
gossip and guesswork, and all the good that
will come out Of it could be measured by the
comparison of a kernel of wheat to bushel
of chaff There always has been and may be
always will be morbid curiosity to ferret out
state secrets whether about small matters or
large ones. But it is an extremely questiona-
BILE policy to pauder to it, By inviting every
body who has a tale to embellish or a griev-
ance to air, to come and get audience through
the medium OF government commission and
brace OF stenographers in their service 1t be-
Titles the investigation and impairs its efficacy
besides prolongiDg it to such degree that the
subject will be a positively fatguipg one long
before any conclusions are reached. 1t seems
that the examiners are instructed to limit
ehCiA oeAustbJ w thO ulCbuOuS VI COuuuClluR
business, and are not expected to point any de-
tects in or recommend any amendments of the
revenue laws. Consequently they are asking
how appointments are procured, what services
are rendered, whether contributions for polit-
ical purposes are paid either voluntarily or
compulsorly and things of that kind, which
are well enough in their way, perhaps, but
trivial compared with the grave duty of ascer-
tainiDg how many commercialirestrction may
lie removed and how intercourse between our
own and foreign lands may be promoted
through proper notifications in the complex
and intricate statutes by which taxes are levied
upon imported merchandise
There is no subject, probably, about which
so wide spread delusion exists, as in respect
to the desirableness of getting federal en-
ployment. The average wages paid to the
men who hold commissions in the customs or
postal service, are immeasurably smaller than
the same capacity commands in other pursuits,
and the average labor exacted of them is
greater. The truth is, that a large proportion
of the persons who fill these places have had
their ambition crushed out of them BY adverse
circumstances. Through no fault of theirs,
perhaps, they have met with failure and dis.
appointment, and found it impossible TO re-
gain their former position. And so they ac-
cept the niggardly pit.ance the government re-
slows upon those who labor for it, and grow
old and gray in a calling, which has no
rewards of exceptional merit, but pays
all alike, whether they be the best or
the poorest. Then again the idea pre-
walls that these positions are very uncertain
and subject to capricious changes. That is not
So There are some twelve hundred persons
employed in the New York Custom House.
The present collector has held office over five
years and the number,of removals he has made
during that period, for cause or otherwise, is
less than one hundred and fifty. The general
presumption is that the appointments are ex-
clusively distributed among political leaders or
men Of influence in the dominant party That
is only partially true. A majority of the
places are given at the request of New York
merchants TO individuals whom they have
known when they were in fourishing circum-
stances, and in whose behalf their sympathies
are very naturally aroused. This class of ap-
plicants never diminishes 1t Is large enough
to take every crumb of what is called a
spirit of subtle irony, one might imagine
public patronage. There are parties toiling at
their desks there who were once proud mer-
chants and who receive in compensation annu-
ally less than quarter as lmuch salary as they
formerly paid several of their own clerks.
have known man to beg for place the pay
of which amounted to less than the tax he paid
on his house few years ago. As rule the
men of this class are endowed with good deal
of Qatural ability, but they have got jostled out
of the procession and cannot regain their
standing. So they have had to fall to the rear
and subsist as they may. 1t is just as natural
they should find their way into the government
service as that the man out west should have
gone home at three o'clock in the morning.
he was manifestly in6briated, and his wife de-
cidedly indignant at his arrival at that hour
and in that state, exclaimed: "What under
the sun did you come home at all for at this
time of nght?'' Because, my DEAR" he
stammered, "aH the other places are shut tp.''
That's exactly why SO many men put up with
the scanty commons and uncongenial work of
the Custom House.
Newspaper readers hereabouts are having a
great deal of amusement at the thick and thin
support the Tribune is giving to the new regime
at the national capital. 1t is the metropolitan
organ par excellence of the present admnistra.
ton and endorses every thing that is done or
proposed to be done in unstinted measure.
What Boswell was to johnson and Capt Cutie
to Bunsby, the Tribune is, and more also, to
the Ohio statesman. If he shakes his he ad he
is represented as having done it with grace
and dignity altogether beyond any thing in the
same line achieved by his predecessor. There
would be SAVIOR of burlesque about this excess
OF adulations if it were not all of a piece, from
the ponderous editorial to the crisp paragraph.
But there can be no mistake about the fact
that the critic of the past dynasty has been
metamorphosed into the panegyrst of the
present one, and the change of base may be
taken as an indication that the Journal in ques-
ton is tired of being out in the cold and is glad
of tine opportunity of basking in the sunshine
of executive favor.
Gail Hamilton is writing some trenchant
criticisms on the prevailing propensity of cer-
tain prints sailing under the banner of reform
to traduce public men without the slightest
warrant of fact or probability. Curiously
enough she has selected as her medium of conn
munication with the public sheet which has
made defamation of character fine art. Per-
haps she had design in putting one libeller
against another. She may have had the same
Idea that the pedagogue acted upon when he
set two refractory scholars to fogging each
other. AT any rate she does show up in vivid
colors the loose, reckless manner IN which pro-
fessors of journalism making enormous preten-
sions to high moral tone lavish opprobrium on