ID: 3364de May 26, 2020, 9:05 a.m. No.9320079   🗄️.is 🔗kun

The most lucrative patronage post in the US was formerly the customs house New York, diversions and embezzlement from that source powered state and national political machines.

 

<In the 19th century, the Port of New York was the primary port of entry for goods reaching the United States, and as such the Custom House in New York was the most important in the country. In 1853, for instance, it collected almost 75% of the custom revenue in the country. Until the passage of the 16th Amendment in 1913, which instituted a national income tax, the New York Custom House supplied two-thirds of the federal government's revenue

Heavyset senator Roscoe Conkling knew that the loss of the custom's house $ would destroy the political machine.

 

>The Customs House patronage was the subject of great debate during the Rutherford B. Hayes administration, as Hayes attempted to establish a merit-based system of appointments, while Senator Roscoe Conkling wished to retain the spoils system, under which he controlled the patronage there. One Collector of Customs, Chester A. Arthur (1871–1878), later became President of the United States. Arthur was said to have made several times more income as a collector than he did as a lawyer, about $50,000 a year in his first three years in office.

 

Roscoe knew if his faction lost control of US customs revenues, another set of thieves, reform democrats or republicans - to Conkling's mind a distinction without a difference - would take the customs house $ and fund their own political machine.A disaster for those in power from which it would take decades to recover.