The Patronage Game at Port Townsend: How Customs Officials Fought Civil Service
A plan to reduce the customs force in Puget Sound sparks a behind-the-scenes battle over patronage, as local officials try to add jobs to avoid civil service exams.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
PORT TOWNSEND, Aug. 13. — [Special.] — Private information has been received here from Washington City that Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Hamlin, who visited and inspected this customs district recently and is now in Alaska, had recommended that the customs force in San Francisco be decreased by the dismissal of thirty-one employees. It is said, also, that similar recommendations affecting the other districts in Oregon and California had been made. The report on the Puget Sound eastern district had not then reached Washington City, but it is generally presumed in the department that inasmuch as it has been definitely proven that smuggling of Chinese and opium in this state has been nearly stopped on account of impending legislation in lowering the duty on opium and the Chinese registration system, that Mr. Hamlin will not urge an increase of officers and may possibly ask that several be suspended. This condition of affairs is seriously agitating the Saunders-Wallace combination, which is anxious to perpetuate their friends in office without the necessity of undergoing a civil service examination. It will require the additional appointment of ten officers to increase the force to fifty, the minimum number necessary to place the district under the civil service regulations. Collector Saunders and Special Agent Cullom, both of whom were formerly partners in the real estate business, have been urging the appointment of extra officers, for the double purpose of putting the district under the wing of civil service and to reward a few more friends of Mr. Wallace, who might assist in securing senatorial legislative votes in his behalf.
“Collector Saunders and Special Agent Cullom, both of whom were formerly partners in the real estate business, have been urging the appointment of extra officers, for the double purpose of putting the district under the wing of civil service and to reward a few more friends of Mr. Wallace, who might assist in securing senatorial legislative votes in his behalf.”
The more things change, the more they stay the same: the fight over civil service and patronage in federal jobs is a recurring theme in American politics. This 1900 episode shows how local officials tried to game the system.
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