The Treasury Department has several special agents in Europe whose business it is to look after and discover evidence of undervaluation, as well as other frauds upon the revenues of the country. The Department knew that certain merchandise was viciously undervalued, but the special agents all failed to get material evidence. Special employees were not then under Civil Service and I got an up-state lawyer from New York to accept a position as special employee, sent him to Europe and he came back with evidence that secured advances in valuations which saved the government perhaps fifty thousand dollars a year from one importer alone.
Appendix “D” will show the material correspondence concerning this particular request for experienced trial lawyers. My first request is dated September 20, 1905; my second, October 14th of the same year. Finally the Commission replied and its first letter bears date of December 2, 1905. It mentions oral requests also having been made. Several examinations were held but up to the time I left the Treasury Department, March 4, 1907, no eligible list had been provided containing a single lawyer who had ever prepared or tried a case in any court. The department needed at least six, could have profitably used twelve, but could not and did not get one. If interested read Appendix “D.” You will detect enough spice to give it a flavor not its own.
The correspondence set out in Appendix “C” has reference to a tobacco examiner. Tobacco intended for Florida was being imported from Cuba at a certain inland city and then shipped back to Tampa and Key West. The duty on unstemmed wrapper tobacco was at that time $1.85 per pound and only 35 cents per pound on unstemmed filler tobacco. When any bale of tobacco contained more than fifteen per cent wrapper, the entire bale was dutiable as wrapper. There was a further provision that tobacco from two or more provinces or dependencies, if mixed, should be dutiable at $1.85 per pound, regardless of its character. Naturally, a tobacco examiner should know something about tobacco. In fact, that is the only subject that a tobacco examiner need know anything about. The correspondence will show the efforts made to secure one and the desire of the Civil Service Commission to aid, as well as the disaster which it believed would follow if the Treasury Department was allowed any voice in the manner of the examination or in classification of those who took the same.
Appendix “B” has reference to a tea examiner, another position that, in the opinion of the Secretary of the Treasury, should be filled by an expert.
The correspondence with reference to a tobacco examiner began some time in 1904. My first rejection of each of the three names certified as being eligible is dated December 15, 1904. The request for a tea examiner was made somewhat later. I quote a paragraph from the Civil Service Commission’s letter of December 9, 1905, which, though written with special reference to the request for eligible trial lawyers, mentions both tobacco and tea examiners:
“Your attention is also invited to the recent examination for tea examiner and tobacco examiner at the Port of ——. Owing to objections by your Department to eligibles certified, it became necessary to hold three examinations before a selection was made for tobacco examiner and two examinations before a selection was made for tea examiner. The examinations finally resulted in the selection of the temporary employees, who, in the judgment of the Commission, after careful investigation, have no unusual qualifications for the duties to be performed and came in at the advanced age of sixty-three years. It seemed to the Commission so apparent that the examinations in question had not resulted in securing to the government the services of the most suitable competitors, that it became necessary for it to recommend to the President that it be relieved of all responsibility for these examinations and on November 18th, the President placed in the excepted class, one examiner of tea and one examiner of tobacco at the Port of ——, which employees do not now have the status of competitive employees.”
It will be noted that the Civil Service Commission itself finally recognized such a weakness in the system that it consented and even recommended that Treasury officials be permitted to select one examiner of tea and one examiner of tobacco at one port, though the last phrase quoted seems to betray a slight apprehension of disaster resulting from there being in the United States two examiners, each requiring very accurate and technical qualifications, “who do not now have the status of competitive employees.”
Appendix “A” is limited to two letters written by the Secretary of the Treasury to the Civil Service Commission refusing to approve rules and regulations which it proposed to promulgate, unless the President so directed. I will add that the President did not so direct. In this instance, as in the last two, the Secretary of the Treasury had his way.
DIPLOMATIC SERVICE.
While on this subject, I cannot refrain from discussing Civil Service as applied to our diplomatic and consular service.