The San Francisco call., 1898-05-05
Certificates of Registra- ton Taken From the
 Colle ctor'S Office.
No Way by Which the Missing Documents May Be 1denti-
 fled When Produced.
SENSATIONAL DISCOVERY.
Traffic In Immigrants Carried on fol Years by Gang of Unknown but
 Suspected BoOdlers.

Federal officials have just made
 sensational discovery in the once ol
 the revenue collector for this district
 A few weeks ago the United States
 Treasury Department authorized Inter
 nal Revenue Collector Lynch to employ 1 two persons to make an index or the
 40 900 Chinese registration certificates
 which are kept in the big steel vault | in the office After they had been a'
 work about two weeks they discovered ] that several of the certificates were | missing.
 As the cash value of each certificate
 Is equal to that of Chinese female slave 1t Is evident that the missing pa
 pers were not Host" for nothing, and that somebody has been lining his pockets with the proceeds. But the theft and sale of the missing docu-
 ments are the least of the loss. Here after when a Chinese person loses his or her certificate and the original can not be found in the vault in the col lector'S office the attorney for the ap- pHcant will establish the alleged fact of the loss by Chinese testimony, and the collector will be obliged to issue a new duplicate certificate to the appli- cant and to file a new original in the vault
 This will open the door to great fraud All that will be necessary for a Chinese to do who has gained admiS- sion to this country by sneakfng in over the Mexican border will be to claim that he was In San Francisco at the time of the registration of the Chinese and that he received a certificate Of registration which was afterWard de- stroyed by fire or lost in some other way. If an index had been made at the time the registration took place such frauds would not be possible. but in the absence of such index there is no means of ascertaining the identity of the miss ing documents so that the way Is clear for all applicants.
 All the evidence secured thus far by the Federal authorities tends to snow that the important and valuable pa pers were abStracted during the term of o. M. Welburn. MT. Lynch,s prede, cessor, and that they were sold at good prices to Chinese men and women who have been surreptitiously landed in Cal ifornia.
 In order to understand the full sig nif1cance of the discovery made by the Federal authorities it Is necessary to refer to the manner in which the cer- tificates were brought into existence. The validity of the act of Congress re- quiring the registration of all Chinese in the United States at the time of the passage of the act was attacked by the Chinese Six Companies, who instructed their people not to register. The courts decided that the act was constitutional and not in contravention of the treaty between China and the United States, and the time was extended in order to give Chinese residents an opportunity of complying with the law.
 The registration was taken very has, tily and no index was made of the names of the Chinese, so that in the case of a Mongolian losing his papers 1t was the work of many tedious hours to find the original among the 0,00O on file In the office of the Collector of 1n- ternal Revenue. It Is made the duty of the Collector to furnish duplicate certificate in case of loss of the dupH- cate originally issued and this duph cate is made a copy of the original on file in the office. But if the original is not found on file, then it is incum- bent upon the applicant to establish the fact that he has registered and that the original should be in the possession of the Collector
 Chinese who have lost their certi- ficates have employed attorneys and customs brokers to procure the dupli- cates, the search being made by clerks of the Collector after office hours. Clerk billiard has been employed in this work on a number of occasions, but he strenuously denied to 8 Call reporter that he had been paid any tips by law yers or brokers for exercising diligence in the search, no allowance being made by the Government for the extra hours spent in this labor.
 Other clerks have shared with Dill lard the labor of these after-hour searches, and they, too, have denied that they have received any pay for +l, ,n{v- io mitted fact that the attorneys and brokers employed by the Chinese to obtain these duplicates have received an average fee of $20 from their clients for each, and it is reported that part of this fee has been paid to clerks who made the search.
 Malvern M. Foote, who has an exten- sive Chinese practice, was asked whether he had paid billiard or any of the other clerks of the Collector any fees or tips for the search, and he re- piled that he had not, but he added this significant explanation: "I have never paid anything to billiard and I do not know whether any others have done so or not, but 1t Is not natural that men should work after office hours and receive no compensation for it. suppose that sometimes a lawyer meet ing one of the clerks on the street would hand him $5 and say, For -'s sake, go Duy yOurSelI a new nat; put don't know that such a thing has been done.
 If any of the certificates are miss ing 1t is damnable thing,'' added the lawyer. 'It is a sign of atrocious fraud and rottenness. What is the value of one of these duplicates? Well, you can tell that as well as I. One of them would be of great value to a Chinaman to pack around with him, so as to en- able him to remain in this country without being really entitled to do so. They would be we'll worth $500 apiece"
 Not only the clerks, but custom brokers and attorneys have had access to the original certificates on file, and the responsibility for their loss being divided among so many 1t will be a difficult matter to fix the blame upon