The Wheeling Daily Register

WASHINGTON LETTER, In Relation to "the Best Civil Service that the World Ever Saw"—How the Government Clerks are Employed—"Satan will Find Some Mischief Still for Idle Hands to do."

Washington, February 26, 1876.

From our regular correspondent.

At no previous time in the history of the civil service has the office holder been so unhappy as he is now. In conversation with a clerk in the redemption division of the Treasury Department, last evening, he told me that there was a wide spread belief among the less intelligent clerks and employees, that it is the cold blooded design of the present Congress to overthrow the government by the reduction of their pay, and the abolition of the superfluous clerical force. I only mention this to show the alarm which the Democratic policy of economy has created in a minute class, the only class in the country, perhaps, that does not regard it as the gentle dew. To say that they wail and gnash their teeth, is scarcely an exaggeration; and ten thousand of them in this small city, make it pretty clamorous.

It was hardly to be expected that the clerk who has been receiving one hundred and fifty dollars, more or less, per month, with eighteen hours for sleep and elegant idleness at the National capital—should rise to such sublimity of self immolation, as to be willing to yield his robbery for the public good. This requires a rarer patriotism than that which follows the pomp and circumstance of war. And yet I question if there is one young man in ten, in government employ, who does not feel a species of humiliation whenever he draws his ill earned pay. He cannot avoid the consciousness that he has furnished no equivalent for it, that he is in a certain sense a pensioner, a pimple of the excrescence that is sapping the life of the nation. True, each individual has about eighty five thousand to keep him, in constituency, but even this supernumerous host is small when compared with the forty millions who say: "Young man, seek some honest living. The country is sick unto death of taxation. In Heaven's name stand alone; support yourself, and give your burdened 'fatherland' a breathing spell."

But it seems this force increases rather than diminishes. More than three hundred Representatives and Senators, with the President, Cabinet, and an army of politicians, have for the last ten years been finding places, without regard to number, for their relatives, political friends or mistresses on the Government pay roll. Each new member that comes to represent his district in the National Congress must have places for his special friends, and, by some miracle, places are found for them. It is a law of physics that two bodies can occupy the same place at the same time, and there are exceptions to this law, the Government pay roll, like a street car, will always hold one more. There was originally no work for them, but "Satan will find some mischief still for idle hands to do," so there has been invented a ponderous labyrinthian system of accounts, so enigmatical in the redundancy of its circumambulatory red tape, that an investigating committee of Philadelphia lawyers would become insane in the effort to comprehend it.

Last week Congress passed a resolution of inquiry as to the number of private buildings rented by the Government. The inquiry was addressed to the Secretary of the Treasury. In about eight days an answer was returned containing the signatures of no less than six clerks besides that of the Assistant Secretary. It had passed through all these hands before the desired information could be obtained by due form and circumstance. All that Congress desired to know on the subject could have been furnished by a man of business habits, in ten minutes, on one page of foolscap.

But even with the most ingenious multiplication and elaboration of work, the clerical force is so numerous that it is difficult to keep up appearance of employment during the short six hours duty that the clerk is supposed to be near his desk. During a presidential canvas many find work in folding and directing campaign circulars, others of the political dilettanti class write campaign documents, while a third class that has the gift of speech is sent as stump missionaries to descant in glittering Garfield-and-Conkling-like general way, on the history and destiny of the party of progress and moral ideas.

Those only who have had a long esoteric acquaintance with the Government departments, can realize what an enormous sum of money is annually spent for blank books and paper with no other that common sense can see, than that a still larger sum may be wasted for unnecessary scribbling. Thousands of useless letters are written daily of which press copies are taken. This would seem to be sufficient for the preservation of such rubbish, but our "best civil service that the world ever saw!" actually transcribes these letters in large ledgers, and there is such an accumulation of these superfluous documents that extra room must be rented to store them.

This is a little, only a little, of the unwrapped truth in regard to the best civil service &c., that I have been compelled to send you this week in lieu of more exciting political news. There has been no bill passed this week, only the repeal of the bankrupt act, debate without legislation in the Senate on the West Point appropriation bill and the Colorado and Texas Pacific Railroad bills. Indeed it seems that the era of thrilling legislation is nearly over. Blaine and Morton have made recent efforts to revive it, but they have not met with encouragement, and even the most retrogressive of the Republicans, if there is any significance in their quiescence, begin to recognize the unwelcome truth, that the past is passed.

There is legislation in embargo, but it will be influenced in a greater or lesser degree, by the reports of the investigating committees. These have thought it advisable to hold secret sessions during the progress of their investigations so that little is known of their proceedings or discoveries. But there is the best authority for saying that the majority will not, in spite of the local din and clamor, be influenced to swerve from the policy of economical reduction that has characterized its action on the bills already passed.

The opposition will do all it can to prevent the reduction, when it will as in the case of the diplomatic bill, array itself on the record with the majority. The Republicans, as a party, are of course opposed to any diminution of the fund that has so long been the cement of their political organization, but in their individual responsibility to constituencies they display a keen appreciation of popular sentiment, and vote in favor of economy.

C. A. S.