New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1878-04-22
CLERKS UNDER OUTSIDE PAY.

epIpIOVS PROTESTS SAID 10 AAN Dim 49,
TO PAPrRs on FILE-uEBCHANTs CHEAlfD'
fBY TELEGRAPH TO TIE rRIBUFE'I
,,,,,,,.,,,o> Anril 81 I'm his statement to the
Hons Committee on Appropriations. on fHo"l'
General Curtis the special agent OF 'he lIc.ISO''
DenartIpent who with his assistant, COloheI No','
has been investigating the "charges and coln.A's'
s;onso cases. showed that many of the protests Oh
which the claims of the merchants Tor reIuhu Vi
duty rested, were fraudulent. In some instances
the importers paid the duties without question rs ="
their legality and, therefore filed no protests at ''
time the entries were completed In othefS' 'ie
protests which they did make were incomplete
in that they covered only one class OF e1ac'iohs'
while 1t was desirable to recover seVera cias9'''
Years after these duties paid, IN order To Jay
tbe foundation for claims against the Governments
protests were prepared, ante-dated, and sarleP'-
tlouslv attached to the original invoices, where no
protests were made at the time OF the mportaIiohS'
Where protests had been made which were lh,ull-
Gent. and covered only one class of claims they
were fraudulently amended. These spurious pro
tests were shown to have been the basis OF many OF
the "charges and commissions" claims, lnclnu'HP
both those which have been settled and paid ana
also those for which an appropriation Is asked
General Curtis did not on Friday nor In the con-
cusion of his testimony yesterday, produce any ey
idence to show who had been guilty of these orig
inal frauds, though the whole drift of his disc!o-
sure seemed TO show that they must have been
managed by Alfred Douglas, jr., the attorney who
solicited the cases from the merchants and pros
ecuted them for so per cent of the proceeds !; ana
that he must have been given access to the invoices
by the collision of clerks or employees OF the Gus
tom House. Iii certain that neither the importers
IN whose names the suits were brought, nor the
counsel who have recently been urging the pay
ment of these claims, had anything to do WIN the
frauds or had any knowledge of them.
When General Curtis closed on Friday the single
feature of the case he had made which astonished
the members of the Committee on Appropriations
more than. any other was that the facts now dis
closed had never been discovered either by the
United States Distnct-AttOreys who had repre-
scented the interests of the Government in more than
700 suits that had Jeen tried and disposed OF and
settled under OF by the Collectors of the port under
whose supervision the papers il all the cases had
been made up for the courts and the referees. This
mystery was solved on Saturday.
1t turns out that the only mer in the New York
Custom House who were obliged to see the original
papers in making up the cases, or who actually did
see and handle the spurious protests were by their
own admission in the employ of Alfred Douglass, jr,
the man who was prosecuting the claims. 1t is true
that they were paid considerable sums for extra
work in copying papers at their homes, in hopes 10
hasten the work of preparing the cases for the
referees but tie fact remains that they adj
nit having had an interest in the cases.
Two of them received one and One-AaI
per cent on the amount recovered by Douglass. One
was paid by the piece and the other received
presents from Douglass. When it is remembered
that these four men were the only ones who saw the
spurious protests and who were likely to have their
suspicious aroused by any internal evidence Of their
fraudulent character it longer to be wondered
at that the facts now disclosed were never brought
tolight General Curtis and Colonel Nevin go further
aud accuse these men Of emitting to copy from the
files of the Custom House papers which ought to
have gone into the cases. but which if they had been
introduced would have aroused the suspicious of
the District-AttOmeys. For instance, when there
were two protests, one genuine but covering only
one class Of exactions and the other spurious and
covering all, the latter only was copied.
No documents were produced before the commit
tee to prove these assertions. The clerks who are
implicated are ]. V. Williams Alvin Rose. and
Warner A. Cnilds, clerks in the Auditors division
of the Collectors office, and Il. X Murray, clerk
in the Naval Office.
General Curtis's investigation has undoubtedly
been the basis of the frequent rumOrs, especially
during the past month, of contemplated changes in
the Collectors and Naval Offices of the New-York
Custom House. and the bearing of his disclosures
upon the administration of General Arthur and Mr.
Cornell becomes. therefore, very important. Before
this inquiry began General Arthur believed, as
every Government officer who had ever had any
thing to do with the charges and commissions"
cases seems to have done, that there was nothing
wrong about them. He TODD General Curtis that he
would find only mares nest and that the only thing
for the Government to do was to settle the claims
as rapidly as possible. One of the first discoveries
which General Curtis seems to have made was the
employment of the four clerks by Alfred Douglass,
IT. aud he says that after that he went TO Gen.
eral Arthur and told him of il. naming the men.
General Arthur seems to have given attention to
the matter for he asked no questions, and the con-
versation soon turned to some other subject. THIS
Indifference of General Arthur probably due to
the conviction he had that there was nothing wrong
about these cases. and that there could not therefore
be anything improper IN the action of his clerks IN
connection with them That General Curtis's report
made impression his mind is shown by the fact
that General Arthur has, since that time, recon-
mended two Of these clerks fol- promotion, and one
OF the nominations has been confirmed by the Secre-
taTy of the Treasury.
The Collector of the Port was also referee in many
OF the charges and commissions" cases. and in al
Of them he certified that the copies of the protests
that sent to the Disrct-Attorney were correct
ones ibis he did as matter of routine, never
probably seeing one Of the original papers, but rely
ing upon the accuracy and integrity of the clerks
who made the copies. III some of these copies were
not honestly made, or if portion of the protests
only had been copied, the Collector might unwit-
With an evident purpose Of ascertaninQ lust what
the Collectors responsibility on this matter was
the committee asked General Curtis many ones
tons and from his answers it appears to he his
opinion that verihcatiOn of the protests by the
Collector himself would have been a matter of very
little labor, and that If it had been done the spn-
riOus character of some of them would have been
discovered
General Curtis has not eompletedhis work in New
York and has made report 10 the Secretary of the
Treasury. IL is hardly probable that any action in
regard to the Collector or Naval Officer growing out
of thus disclosure will be taken if at all until the
Official report of the investigation is submitted.