A LAND OF GRAFT

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 29 November 1927, Page 7

A LAND OF GRAFT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. JUDGE KELBY'S REPORT. A system of graft typical of the difficulties which municipal government in America has to fight against is revealed in a report presented to the city of New York. It discloses that for 10 years almost the whole staff of the city Health Department has organised into a corrupt body of bribe-seekers. Most of the favours sold were permits to sell tainted milk and other foods (writes the New York correspondent of the Daily News). A new Health Commissioner appointed about a year ago has dismissed 45 employees for corruption. Five employees on pension have had their pensions stopped.

Judge Kelby, who has spent a yeSr over his report, found that many sanitary inspectors had their names on the wages list of dairymen and received regular payment. Milk dealers and others have told him that unless such payments were made business was rendered impossible for them by interminable complaints and instructions. The “ honest ” men in the department were known as “ package ” men, because they would receive gifts only in kind. Others received payments up to £lO a time. A system of doubling was started, of which a typical case is one in which a small dealer paid £5O for a permit to sell milk. Later on the inspector was fat'd £lOOO by a big dairy concern to withdraw the license from him and some other small dealers. One of the biggest sources of graft was from milk and cream brought into New York from districts officially under a ban. The regular corruption rate on this was a dollar per can. Dealers who tried to evade it were made to pay a dollar and a-half per can. £20,000 IN BRIBES Harry Danzigar, one of the chief inspectors, gave evidence against the secretary to the Health Commissioner, and confessed that in 1924 and 1925 he had received in bribes of this sort over £20,000, and turned over 90 per cent, of income to the inspectors was the illegal sale of permits to kill fowls. These were given in defiance of protests from weigh, hours, at anything from 2500 dollars to 5000 dollars each. A highly-organised bluff upon the whole of the city authorities was carried out for five years in succession. The department each year issued a scare report to the Finance Committee asking for an extra appropriation to guard against outbreaks of disease. In one case it was Spanish influenza; in another it was typhus in Europe; in a third it was bubonje plague in other States of the Union. Judge Kelby finds that in most cases these plagues did not even exist. The amount thus Waster was 1,000,090 dollars. That the root cause of this kind of graft here and elsewhere is the popular election of men to paid official positions and the awarding of employment as political pay is clear. Judge jielby mildly suggests that “district political leaders should be told to keep their hands off the Health Department activities in their areas.” His pathetic conclusion is: “Indeed, a full remedy may never be found until eonugh honest men can be found in the city of New York to inspect the food supply." Apparently, Doigenes would need a very powerful flashlight here to-day. He offers as the only excuse for the guilty inspectors the fact that their salaries ranged from £450 to £650 a year, a sum which he thinks—and comparison with the cost of living suggests he is right—is inadequate to put men above great temptation.