The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1885-09-12
The Treasury Department.

From the Baltimore San.
Senator Sherman and Judge Foraker in
their recent speeches in Ohio both pointed
exultingly to the fact that when the books and
vouchers in the Treasury Department were
compared and examined they tailed exactly,
and that when the money in the treasury was
counted every dollar and fraction of a dollar
called for by the treasury books we're found in
the treasury vaults. "Here then,' said Sen
ator Sherman, "they discovered no fraud. y
1t is true that the books, the vouchers and the
money in the treasury were found to agree
with each other. But this is not the question;
it is simply an evasion of it. Senator Sher-
man had large experience as Secretary of
the Treasury. He well knows that the vouch
ers may be correct on their face, and the
,easury books may correspond with them,
but that the disbursements based upon the
vouchers may have been without warrant of
law. There are six auditors in the Treasury
Department whose duty it is to receive and
examine all accounts on which warrants are
to be drawn on the treasury by the other de-
partments of the government. None of these
auditors is to pass any accounts until he has
ascertained that they are legally payable by
the treasury. If he has any doubt on the
subject he refers the matter to the first or
second comptroller, whose duty 1t Is to exam
inc all accounts adjusted by the auditors and
countersign all warrants. An instance in
point is the recent refusal of Comptroller
Durham to pay the vouchers sent in by the
Court of Alabama Claims, on the ground that
the twenty or more additional persons put on
the rolls of the court as assistant attorneys,
clerks, messengers, &C., and whose united
salaries foot up thirty thousand dollars per
annum, were appointed by the court in open
violation of law. If the law providing for the
organization of the court had been examined
by the Republican treasury officials, or lfthey
had not passed the vouchers under the himsy
cover of incidental expenses, several hundred
thousand dollars would have been saved to
the treasury. Another case in point is that
of the star route frauds, by which, according
to the Republican Attorney General Brew
ster, the government was robbed of four mil
lions of dollars. All the vouchers fer this
large sum passed under the eyes of the sixth
auditor of the treasury, were ostensibly exam
ined by him, and their correctness certified
and warrants signed for the amounts they
called for by the then Secretary Of the Treas
ury and countersigned by the comptroller.
The vouchers were correct enough on their
face, the entries in the treasury books cor
responded to the vouchers, but they were
fraudulent nevertheless. Will any one have
the hardihood to say that this great series of
frauds would have been possible if the treas
ury officials had taken note of the sudden and
enormous increase in the contracts for carry
ing the mails on remote postal routes and
among sparse population, and before audit
ing the accounts had instituted an inquiry into
this sudden and vast increase in the expendi-
lures Of the Postoffice Department and into
the law governing the subject? What has
been done by Comptroller Durham with re-
spect to the illegal vouchers of the Court of
Alabama Claims might and ought to have been
done by the Republican comptrollers and au-
ditors who preceded him with respect to the
fraudulent star route vouchers, and if it had
been done, so transparent were the frauds that
they could have been stopped at once and four
millions of public money would not have been
taken out of the treasury and distributed
among the persons, official and nom official,
who had conspired together to rob the gov
eminent. The power given to the Second
Assistant Postmaster-G General to increase the
contract price for expediting the carrying of
the mails was the colorado preteXt for his
action. But the law never contemplated the
abuse of this power in the interest of the star
route contractors and confederates, and by
ignoring this abuse, which for a long time
was matter of public notoriety, and by pass
ing the vouchers without question, the Re-
publican treasury officials made themselves
indirectly, though not legally, responsible for
the loss that the government had sustained
We should not have noticed this subject if
Senator Sherman and Judge Foraker, in their
arraignment of the Democratic party, had not
laid stress on the honesty and integrity with
which the affairs of the Treasury Department
had been administered, citing the vouchers
for disbursements, and the balance in the
treasury as proof of it. The vouchers, as we
have shown, are no proof at all On the con-
trary, to get at the facts, it is necessary to go
behind the vouchers and see what fraud and
peculations and illegal charges they cover.