The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-12-17
'SWbEPING CHARGES UPHELD
$. R. TULLoCH SUSTAINED IN
 HIS ACCUSATIONS.


 First Assistant Perry $. Heath, George
 ". Beavers and Others Bound Respon-
 sibie for Irregularities and Fraudu-
 lent Empioyments in Postal Depart
 ment Service.
 Washington, Dec. 1e.-The report of Messrs. Conrad and Bonaparte on the charges made by S. w. TulIoch, for merly cashier of the Washington city postofice. against the administration of that office was made public to-day Under instructions from the president the report views the Tulloch charges from legal standpoint" The report begins with brief history and nature of the Tulloch charges and then makes the following preliminary. observa- tions" concerning them:
 No improper official act on the part of any public officer or employe is al- legged which did not occur more than tdree years before July IT, 1903. and as all possible prosecutions are barred we are led, therefore. to report on these matters, from legal standpoint, in broader sense than we might otherwise venture to ascribe to them, and under- stand that our views are desired as to the legal propriety of the official action disclosed and not merely whether 1t may or may not have been criminal.
 The Tulloch charges have never been, properly speaking, investigated at all. We have been repeatedly confrontr ed in our inquiry with an assertion on as to a question of fact, with no suftl- cient means at our command to deter mine which statement we could advise you to believe"
 The tendency to evade answering these charges evinced by those replying to the postmaster-ge generals request for such a result, the report says. is illus trated very forcibly by the charges against Perry s. Heath, former assist ant postmaster-gene which have been heretofore made public, and his answer to them.
 We consider this answer" the report continues, altogether insufficient. and no less unsatisfactory in substance than in form.''
 Continuing, the report says the revis- ion of Postmaster Willett's accounts Is of itself sufficient to show that MT. Heath's official record is not so clear as to defy suspicion. It adds:
 Moreover, the confidential report of Inspector in Charge Smith and the spe-. cial report of Inspector Little tend so strongly to sustain some of the most serious charges made by MT. Tu1loch against MT. Heath that it is quite irn-. possible to dispose of these charges by calling them lies out of the whole cloth,' especially when we remember that the confidential report is stated by Inspector Smith to set forth irregulari- ties discovered by himself, and that the special report was prepared a whole year after Mir. Tuiioch had left the of flee. The reasonable inference to be drawn from MT. Heath's complete fail- ure to meet full and explicitly accusa- tions which, as Postmaster General Payne very justly admonished him, charged him with many acts of doubt full propriety,' added to the facts ap- bearing from the record evidence laid before us, oblige us to say that at least strong prirna facie case Is presented of wilful and reckless disregard, by the late first assistant postn1aster-g general, of obligations imposed on him by the regulations of his own department, as we'll as by the statutes of the United States, and we feel 1t our duty to add 41, ,,r,1 must be inevitably aroused, in our judgment, by an impartial considera- ton of the facts submitted to us, and of his plainly inadequate explanations" The report takes up in detail the charges of improper appointments of subordinates and improper disburse- ments of public funds, as contained in | the Tulloch charges, and, after analysis, concludes:
 t.So far as is indicated by the papers submitted to us, the persons directly responsible for these fraudulent enl~ iployments were Messrs. Perry s. Heath and George w. Beavers, neither of whom is now in the public service. It seems clear, however, that this respon- sibility extends, in some measure, to the late postmaster general, who ap- pears to have at least tolerated the practice after notice of it's existence. and to the late and the present post masters at Washington, each of whom ! appears to have accepted the transfer 1 to his office of a number of persons thus l employed without, so far as is shown, I any protest or exposurefacts substan- tially admitted as to himself in Dr. l Merritt's letter of June 29.'
 The improper disbursement of public funds receives considerable space in l the report, and in this connection 1 Messrs. Conrad and Bonaparte go somewhat outside of the Tulloch charges and comment on a special re- port, under date of May 2S last, by In- spector CrowelI, which relates how George w. Beavers received s1,14S for
 expenses in assisting special attorneys l in the court of claims"
 I It is stated, through a review of a statement on the subject by Auditor Castle, that MT. Beavers had been
 promised raise in salary as head of l the salary and allowance division, and that Postmaster Van Cott, at New York, was instructed, signed by Acting
 First Assistant Postmaster-Ge General < George M. Allen, the letter being coun- 1 tersigned "A. W. M" to pay MT. Beav- ! ers an allowance of $4 day from July