THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1910 CORRUPTION IN AMERICA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 976, 21 February 1910, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1910 CORRUPTION IN AMERICA.

The system of fraud by which the Sugar Trust, the National Sugar Refining Company, and another firm have been defrauding the United States Customs for years past, is already shown to be one of the most colossal affairs of it kind that has been discovered. A cable message received last week stated that £700,000 had been paid in settlement of duties claimed on unweighed imports, but this is only a small proportion of the amount of which the Government is believed to have been defrauded. The sura mentioned probably included the amounts paid in restitution by all three companies for in the latter part of last year the Sugar Trust had paid over to the Customs on this account £400,000, and the amounts said to be due by the two others would bring the total up to the £700,000 mentioned in the cable message. The method employed in perpetrating tne frauds was simple In the case, apparently typical of all, of; Havemeyer and Elder's refinery, i which is connected with the Trust, 1 a device was Used by means of

which, at eacn of the seventeen scales used in tha weighing of im- I ported sugar, the beam was manipulated so as to record a less weight than was actually on the \

the company, by this method, saved the payment of duty on 141b of sugar out of each truck load, but the New York "Sun," which declares that the Trust has robbed the Government dur- ; •*.!_„ „„„♦■ fmontit trnafa nf snmfl SIX

millions sterling, estimates the unweighted sugar at 5 to 10 per cent, of each load. Whichever of these statements is correct, the fact remains that the Trust, whose directors are omnnn the mnst nrorninent business

men in America, 'has been guilty of deliberate and long-continued theft. Obviously such'a system could not be carried on for so long without the knowledge "if not the connivance, of customs officials, of whom one sat at each scale, alongside the Trust's checker, but. precisely how far the I higher officials and the heads of the Trust knew of the frauds, has yet to

be learned. If the investigations that are being made reveal anything like the widespread conspiracy that is reported to have existed, many imi portant men will find themselves in a very awkward position. For if all is true that is alleged, the Trust exerted a malign infleunce in very high quarters. For years, in spite of the fact that knowledge of the swindle seems to have been almost common

property, nothing was aone to convict the offenders. If a Customs officer proved "troublesome," the Trust is said to have been able to secure his prompt removal from the service. Officials who reported to their superiors the existence of fraudulent practices met with no encouragement. One of them declares that eleven years ago he laid detailed evidence of the Trust's misdeeds before Mr Gage, the Secretary of the Treasury. Mr Gage expressed the opinion that his "good friend," the President of the Trust, knew nothing

of the matter, and gava orders ina*. he was to be sup,lied with the i officer's report, and told that- if anything was being done as alleged, "it must be stopped." Naturally the fraud went on ns before. The special officer Who w* siven a free hand by President to lay bare the whole matter, has complained that when he began to get on to the track of the "big men", power high up in the Treasury put obstacles in his way. The conspiracy of fraud seems to have been supported by a conspiracy of obstruction and blindness.