Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1880-12-17
CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.
How Tenure OF Office Operates In tie
Postal Service.

How Tenure OF Office Operates in tie
Postal Service.
New York Dispatch to Cincinnati Enquirer.
The suit at Washington between c. c.
HuntIey and his cousin, Silas Huntley,
mail contractors. is {, small sign of the an
cient rottenness in the whole mail con-
tracing business. Mail contractors orig
inally were stage prOprietors, many OF
them from the New England states, who
had been i'll the stage business from Bos-
ton to Albany and Boston to New York, I.
and as the country expanded they and
their sons sought occupation for their
stages and stock under the government
service. With the growth Ofthe Far West
and the detached mining camps, and the
clamor raised by such small places for the
full benefits of the mails as in older parts,
men have gradually assembled around the
postofficc department who know all the Of
ficials there, both great and minor, and
who in many cases tampered with the an
nuel bids. SO as to have the advantage Of
any newcomers.
Here see one Of the evils of a long
standing civil service. have almost in
variably found that Il man is in govern
ment department two or three years before
Ec makes the connections which tempt
him to sell out the government, his en-
ploycr. \ large number of persons en-
ployed as clerks at Washington are con
stantly Oh the lookout for some place
where they can advise outside parties to
sue the government. For example. the
laws are to bc revised at the treasury de-
partment. and two or three men are de-
tailed to proceed with the revision. They
conc to a place, perhaps, where they find
| that we have cXacted from certain vessels
tonnage dues, and the same had been will
ingly paid but on comparing the laws 1t
was perhaps found that there was sufii-
cient ground for those vessels to rake up
claim for the return of their money, ex-
tending some years back. Hercupon the
clerks employed by the government put
their heads together and say Let us
start scheme of recovering that money
from the government, and it Is worth
Thousand of dollars to u.s.
So, perhaps, Il neishborng claim agent
receives the suggestion and becomes tie
third partner. He proceeds, We may say,
to the unconscious steamship companies
and says: ''Fcr S2j, 600 will get back
those duties you have paid Hercupon
the job widens, and New York jobbers and
Judges arc let into the lobby, so rs to ill.,
tluencc the foreign affairs committee and
So they all go down to Washington, and
the little circle Of corruption widcns, and
! at last they slip through Congress bill
aud actually take out Of the treasury OF
the United States. through the instrumcn-
tality of the clerks whom the government
has kept in office for years. some hundreds
of thousands of dollars. and now are keep
ing up the job to get the interest.
Suppose you had in your employment
| two clerks who had slipped to SOME un
known creditors OF yours and said: I'VE
! have found where you can recover S261,
! 900 from our boss What would DC the
standard of honesty in private business for
such clerks Here, in the mail system,
one Huntlcy swcars against the other
tha: he has incurred great expense in pay
| ing everybody filling the bellies of glut on
GUS newspaper correspondents, lending
money to clerks, &c.-yet those two per-
SONS have been around Washington as
long as know anything about it. They
probably know every clerk i'll the postOfhco
| department. According to the thousands
declared to have been spent, they must
| have sowed Il little corruption wherever
they went.
Years ago two brothers in the CniOr
I army came to Washington and one got tho
ether made an assistant postmaster gen
cral. The first stood on the outside to tai
the contractors. The inside man knew al
about the bids, and the outside man knew
every mail ,iobbcr, and could raise UP new
ones. They both became rich. and one OF
them finally began to write to the railroa,
companies throughout the country to t;.ks
united action and threaten the gov
ernment that OH u certain day they
would stop carrying the mails unless thei
compensation was raised. Many of tic
companies dis; SD act, and the whole busi
ness or this country might have been s,ls
pended but for the discovery OF the pr!ntet
circular OF the mai, inside Of the postofficc
who had taken his government salary fo
years only to admit robbers into its de
partmcnts. Like all such God -foTsakel
men, they both came to grief. one being
stricken with disease aud wandering to :
distant coast to die, and the other breath
ing his last under suspicious Of suicide.
While in Washington | saw incrctibl!
large 81 gns OF great plumber to begin IL
soon US Hayes goes out of Office. The dc
partlncnts ought to be again wceded Ou
at the beginning Of the new administra
ton /: fer, although they have been i'm
proved. several of them are rs bad as they
can be. General Garfield does not want t.
be disturbed within few months of hi
Inauguration by Investigations.