Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/157

Rh the examination is a mere farce; that as soon as the examining board knows whom the collector wants appointed the favored candidates will pass the examination without the least difficulty. And so you go from place to place, you examine office after office, and you will find the same system at work, and you will find that it tends to produce similar results, only different in degree.

If the Senator will allow me, he is evidently alluding to a condition of affairs in California at a former period, under another Administration.

As to the default, I do.

But as the Senator was using the present tense, saying “you will find the same condition of things there,” I was apprehensive that a mistake might arise. I will say to the Senator that the offices in California were never better filled, nor could they be, than they are now.

I shall certainly not charge upon the customhouse in San Francisco anything that is not in accordance with the truth. What I referred to was simply the results of investigations which the Committee on Retrenchment made in California when we were there. And I refer to the report of the committee all who want to inform themselves. I will not say that we discovered great frauds being now perpetrated; but we did discover the same looseness in making appointments which prevails elsewhere; and in some statements which were made to us by the higher officials, who themselves complained of bad results, we found evidence that the looseness in the manner of making appointments was at the bottom of the abuses.

That examination took place two years ago and referred to what had preceded that time.

Yes, sir. The committee visited San Francisco in August, 1869.

Now, Mr. President, let us go on in our inquiries. You might think that after all that frantic bustle and hurry