Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1912-01-08
CUSTOMS FRAUDS.
CONTINUED from Page One.)

slilillS III luDlIC OillllOiI HUH liiOcC
| shameful disclosures; but even If they
did or if the public did rot catch on
to their responsibility, still may we
not feel certain that Secretary Mac
Veagh was right when he said in his
annual report for the year 190S-9.
Any considerable share of the pres
emf cost of this decentralization to the
public revenues, to the efficiency of
the service, and To public and private
morality is a tremendous amount to
| pay in mere liquidation of the small
debts of political leaders y -
| Unless the customs service can be re-
leased from the payment of political
debts and exaetions, and from meet
| ing the supposed exigencies of politi
cal organizations, big and little it will
be impossible TO have any honest SER
| vice for any Tenth of time.
There was not a scintilla of reason
to suppose. and | do not believe for a
moment that the surveyor in ques-
| ton was corrupt. Let us have no
doubt on that point.
How then, did it all happen?
To consider this in detail, let us go
back 80 years-say to 1SS3-the year
in which Oliver Splitter went to work
on the docks of the American Sugar
Refinery in Brooklyn
Twenty years later in the
year 1910. while giving in court his
ultimate confession, he was asked how
he got his first instructions to cheat
the government. He replied and, we
Believed, truthfully, that he needed no
Instructions was in the air. he
said already"
That same air was breathed by hun
dreds of government employees for all
those years-a generation and more
of time. Did never one of them notice
how bad it was? Was never one of
them solicitous for his health, in that
miasmic murk?
We examined every discoverable
survivor among them-tWo hundred or
more-and found score or so so,
more sensitive than the rest, who ad-
mitted that they had been somewhat
hampered in their duties. They had
reported the facts and so solieitous
for their welfare did their superior Of
ficers instantly become that in every
case, Immediately upon their making
complaint, Whit. Away they were
transferred TO more salubrious at
mospheres, or relieved entirely from
government service.
Would that have happened except
for politics?
During all those years, the sugar
went in open daylight directly from
the government scales across 10 feet
spdce to the merchants scales. No
# L
Journey and yet. on every working
Jay OF every year, for a quarter of
century, every truckload of that sugar
grew either IA pounds or % pounds in
weight crossing that 10 feet-right in
broad dalight, with the two sets of
hgures being recorded by scales and
then in writing. there 10 feet apart.
Must not even the governments en-
ployes, however ignorant Of physics
and mathematics, have been amazed
by such a presto change.
furthermore, over in the New York
custom House itself the government
llquldat0rs had the labor of figuring
ilght out of the official entry papers
the very extent of this remarkable in
cfethent in order that the govern
IAeht itself might refund TO the Sugar
Company the duties which had been
temporarily paid on the true amount,
Must not some of the liouidators
nave been puzzled by this arithme
tic?
one OF them told me he had pointed
OUT c his superiors a particularly ha-
grant instance where 100000 pounds of
sugar had disappeared in certain
cargo.
Luckily the reckless busybody es-
capped without losing his lob.
Why was it so Intellectual. or even
dangerous to suggest that the same
tnlhs could not scientifically weigh
l2,oVO,o09 pounds on one scales and 10
100000 on another?
Was 1t not politics? Was il not
campaign contributions?
one OF the first acts Of the surveyor |
whose appointment you resisted. was
70 ask for two special exceptions from
the Civil Service competitive cIassif-
calon. IN order that he might appoint |
Two satisfactory deputy SURVEYORS
10 DC executive heads of the two great |