The firm's total importations were about $6,000,000 a year; it was evident, according to the Government officials, that the frauds were not only enormous, but that they had been going on for a long time. These frauds were not so construed "by any technical construction, or far-fetched interpretation," but were committed "by the firm's deliberately and systematically stating the cost of their goods below the purchase price for no conceivable reason but to lessen the duties to be paid to the United States."
These long-continuing frauds could not have been possible without the custom-house officials having been bribed to connive. The practice of bribing customs officers was an old and common one. In his report to the House of Representatives on February 23, 1863, Representative Van Wyck, chairman of an investigating committee, fully described this system of bribery. In summarizing the evidence brought out in the examination of fifty witnesses he dealt at length with the custom house officials who for large bribes were in collusion with brokers and merchants. "No wonder," he exclaimed, "the concern [the custom house] is full of fraud, reeking with corruption." [Footnote: The Congrssional Globe, Appendix, Thirty-seventh Congress, Third Session, 1862-3, Part ii: 118.
"During the last session the Secretary had the honor of transmitting the draft of a bill for the detection and prevention of fraudulent entries at the custom-houses, and he adheres to the opinion that the provisions therein embodied are necessary for the protection of the revenue…. For the past year the collector, naval officer, and surveyor of New York have entertained suspicions that fraudulent collusions with some of the customs officers existed. Measures were taken by them to ascertain whether these suspicions were well founded. By persistent vigilance facts were developed which have led to the arrest of several parties and the discovery that a system of fraud has been successfully carried on for a series of years. These investigations are now being prosecuted under the immediate direction of the Solicitor of the Treasury, for the purpose of ascertaining the extent of those frauds and bringing the guilty parties to punishment. It is believed that the enactment at the last session of the bill referred to would have arrested, and that its enactment now will prevent hereafter, the frauds hitherto successfully practiced."— Annual Report for 1862 of Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury. No matter what laws were passed, however, the frauds continued, and the importers kept on bribing.]
Great was the indignation shown at the charges by the flustered members of the firm; most stoutly these "eminently proper" men asserted their innocence. [Footnote: If the degree of the scandal that the unearthing of the frauds created is to be judged by the extent of space given to it by the newspapers, it must have been large and sensational. See issues of the New York "Times" and other newspapers of January 11, 1873, January 29, 1873, March 20, 1873, and April 20, 1873. A full history of the case, with the official correspondence from the files of the Treasury Department, is to be found in the New York "Times," issue of April 28, 1873.] In point of fact (as has been shown in the chapters on the Astor fortune) several of them had long been slyly defrauding in other fields, particularly by the corrupt procuring of valuable city land before and during the Tweed regime. They had also been enriching themselves by the corrupt obtaining of railroad grants. There was a scurrying about by Phelps, Dodge and Company to explain that some mistake had been made; but the Government steadfastly pressed its action; and Secretary Boutwell curtly informed them that if they were innocent of guilt, they had the opportunity of proving so in court. After this ultimatum their tone changed; they exerted every influence to prevent the case from coming to trial, and they announced their willingness to compromise. The Government was induced to accept their offer; and on February 24, 1873, Phelps, Dodge and Company paid to the United States Treasury the sum of $271,017.23 for the discontinuance of the million-dollar suit for custom-house frauds. [Footnote: See Houses Executive Documents, Forty-third Congress, First Session, 1874, Doc. No. 124:78. Of the entire sum of $271,017.23 paid by Phelps, Dodge and Company to compromise the suit, Chester A. Arthur, then Collector of, the Port, later President of the United States, received $21,906.01 as official fees; the Naval Officer and the Surveyor of the Port each were paid the same sum by the Government, and Jayne received $65,718.03 as his percentage as informer.
One of the methods of defrauding the Government was peculiar. Under the tariff act there was a heavy duty on imported zinc and lead, while works of art were admitted free of duty. Phelps, Dodge and Company had zinc and lead made into Europe into crude Dianas, Venuses and Mercurys and imported them in that form, claiming exemption from the customs duty on the ground of their being "works of art.">[
THEIR PRESENT WEALTH TRACED TO FRAUD.
From these persistent frauds came, to a large extent, the great collective and individual wealth of the members of this firm, and of their successors. It was also by reason of these frauds that Phelps, Dodge and Company were easily able to outdo competitors. Only recently, let it be added, they formed themselves into a corporation with a capital of $50,000,000. With the palpably great revenues from their continuous frauds, they were in an advantageous position to buy up many forms of property. Beginning in 1880 the mining of copper, they obtained hold of many very rich mining properties; their copper mines yield at present (1909) about 100,000,000 pounds a year. Phelps, Dodge and Company also own extensive coal mines and lines of railroads in the southwest Territories of the United States. Ten thousand employees are directly engaged in their copper and coal mines and smaller works, and on the 1,000 miles of railroad directly owned and operated by them.
So greatly were the members of the firm enriched by their frauds that when D. Willis James, one of the partners sued by the Government for fraudulent undervaluations, died on September 13, 1907, he left an estate of not less than $26,967,448. John F. Farrel, the appraiser, so reported in his report filed on March 28, 1908, in the transfer tax department of the Surrogate's department, New York City. But as the transfer tax has been, and is, continuously evaded by ingenious anticipatory devices, the estate, it is probable, reached much more.
James owned (accepting the appraiser's specific report at a time when panic prices prevailed) tens of millions of dollars worth of stock in railroad, mining, manufacturing and other industries. He owned, for instance, $2,750,000 worth of shares in the Phelps-Dodge Copper Queen Mining Company; $1,419,510 in the Old Dominion Company, and millions more in other mining companies. His holdings in the Great Northern Railway, the history of which is one endless chain of fraud, amounted to millions of dollars—$3,840,000 of preferred stock; $3,924,000 of common stock; $1,715,000 of stock in the Great Northern iron ore properties; $1,405,000 of Great Northern Railway shares in the form of subscription receipts, and so on. He was a large holder of stock in the Northern Pacific Railway, the development of which, as we shall see, has been one of incessant frauds. His interest in the "good will" of Phelps, Dodge and Company was appraised at $180,000; his interest in the same firm at $945,786; his cash on deposit with that firm at $475,000. [Footnote: At his death he was eulogistically described as "the merchant philanthropist." On the day after the appraiser's report was filed, the New York "Times," issue of March 29, 1908, said: "Mr. James was a senior member of the firm of Phelps, Dodge & Co., of 99 John Street. His interest in educational and philanthropic work was very deep, and by his will he left bequests amounting to $1,195,000 to various charitable and religious institutions. The residue of the estate, amounting to $24,482,653, is left in equal shares to his widow and their son." On the same day that the appraiser's report was filed a large gathering of unemployed attempted to hold a meeting in Union Square to plead for the starting of public work, but were brutally clubbed, ridden down and dispersed by the police.]
In the defrauding of the United States Government however, Phelps, Dodge and Company were doing no uncommon thing. The whole importing trade was incessantly and cohesively thriving upon this form of fraud. In his annual report for 1874, Henry C. Johnson, United States Commissioner of Customs, estimated that tourists returning from Europe yearly smuggled in as personal effects 257,810 trunks filled with dutiable goods valued at the enormous sum of $128,905,000. "It is well known," he added, "that much of this baggage is in reality intended to be put upon the market as merchandise, and that still other portions are brought over for third parties who have remained at home. Most of those engaged in this form of importation are people of wealth"… [Footnote: Executive Documents, Forty-third Congress, Second Session, 1874, No. 2: 225.] Similar and additional facts were brought out in great abundance by a United States Senate committee appointed, in 1886, to investigate customs frauds in New York. After holding many sessions this committee declared that it had found "conclusive evidence that the undervaluation of certain kinds of imported merchandise is persistently practiced to an alarming extent at the port of New York." [Footnote: U.S. Senate Report, No. 1990, Forty-ninth Congress, Second Session, Senate Reports, iii, 1886-87.] At all other ports the customs frauds were notorious.