Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 August 1885 — THE SPOILS SYSTEM. [ARTICLE]

THE SPOILS SYSTEM.

Sweeping Changes In the Internal Kevenne Office Have Demoralized the Service. [Washington special to Chicago Tribune.] It is generally conceded at the Treasury Department that the result of the sweeping changes in the force of Internal Revenue Collectors affords a striking argument against the spoils system in its effects upon the public service. All but nineteen Collectors have been displaced, and inexperienced mefi have been substituted, and the service has consequently suffered. The subordinate officers under the Collectors not being included in the civilservice rules, a clean sweep is reported to have been made in many cases. The results ofv this substitution of inexperienced for trained workers has been seriously felt in the department work.In many instances the clerical force has shown its incompetency, and serious complications have resulted. Circulars of instructions have been issued on matters so trivial that they would seem to be wholly unnecessary if the employes were at all acquainted with their duties. The difficulties arising from changes in the service are still more serious in the apparent development of schemes and tricks to defraud the revenue wherever it has been supposed that the inexperience of the new Collector could be’ taken advantage of. Many of the old devices with which the older Collectors are familiar, and which would not have been attempted while they were in office, have now been revived. Investigations of frauds in measurements, counterfeiting of stamps, and numerous other devices, are in progress almost all over the. country, and an increased amount of illicit distilling in the South is coi ceded. The trained agents who have long been in the service, and who hive been promoted from subordinate positions, are the men who are now discovering these frauds, and they are the men upon whom the Government wholly relies to save the revenue service from disgrace.