# Twenty Per Cent Cases (87 U.S. 179)

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United States Supreme Court
87 U.S. 179
Twenty Per Cent Cases
APPEALS in fourteen cases from the Court of Claims; the case being thus:
On the 28th of February, 1867, Congress passed this joint resolution:
'That there shall be allowed and paid . . . to the following described persons, now employed in the civil service of the United States, at Washington, as follows: To civil officers, temporary and all other clerks, messengers, and watchmen, including enlisted men detailed as such, to be computed upon the gross amount of the compensation received by them; and employees, male and female, in the executive mansion, and in any of the following named departments, or any bureau or division thereof, to wit: state, treasury, war, navy, interior, post-office, attorney-general, agricultural, and including civil officers, and temporary and all other clerks and employees, male and female, in the offices of the coast survey, naval observatory, navy yard, arsenal, paymaster-general, including the division of referred claims, commissary-general of prisoners, bureau of refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands, quartermater's, capitol and treasury extension, city post-office, and commissioner of public buildings, to the photographer and assistant photographer of the treasury department, to the superintendent of meters, and to lamplighters under the commissioner of public buildings, an additional compensation of twenty per centum on their respective salaries as fixed by law, or where no salary is fixed by law, upon their pay respectively, for one year from and after the 30th day of June, 1866. Provided, That this resolution shall not apply to persons whose salaries, as fixed by law, exceed $3500 per annum.'
On the 12th of July, 1870, Congress passed an act in these words:
'All acts and joint resolutions, or parts thereof, and all resolutions of either house of Congress granting extra compensation or pay, be, and the same are hereby repealed, to take effect on the 1st day of July, 1870.'
Under the said joint resolution of 28th of February, 1866, fourteen different persons filed at different times-some of them after the passage of the repealing act-claims in the court below for the twenty per cent. given by the statute.
The first was employed by the bureau of yards and docks, as a machinist in the navy yard at Washington, upon daily wages at the agreed sum and price of $3.25 per day.
The second and third as coppersmiths on the treasury extension, upon daily wages. Under specific appropriations for the construction of the treasury extension, contracts were entered into for finished work, comprehending both materials and labor materials separately, and labor by the day separately. The services in these two cases were rendered under the latter contracts.
The fourth and fifth as watchmen upon the capitol extension, at daily wages, their compensation changing during the year.
The sixth as a laborer upon monthly wages in the quartermaster's department in the city of Washington.
The seventh was employed in the treasury extension as a laborer upon daily wages; working for part of the time at $1.75 per day, and for another part at $2 per day.
The eighth by the authority of the surgeon-general of the army, as a carpenter at the depot for receiving and distributing medical supplies in Washington.
The ninth was a watchman, laborer, and teamster by the quartermaster's department at Washington.
The tenth was a laborer by the commissary department at Washington.
The eleventh was a laborer, upon daily wages, at the Washington arsenal.
The twelfth was in the secret service division of the Treasury Department, in the capacity of detective, at a monthly salary of $150 per month.
The thirteenth, one Hoffman, was employed by one of the quartermasters on duty in the department at Washington, by the day, as sexton at the Arlington Cemetery, near Washington, but in Virginia, and there rendered his services.
The fourteenth, one Bell, was a plate-printer in the bureau of engraving and printing in the Treasury Department. He was paid the market price for his work, the price being neither a salary nor a per diem compensation, but a fixed rate for the work done; that is to say, per one hundred sheets of face printing and per one hundred sheets of back printing. In the performance of his duties he employed and paid an assistant, but the pay of the assistant was received directly from the disbursing officers of the treasury, and was deducted by them from the amount earned by the claimant. The amount paid him after such deduction was $1184.30, for twenty per cent. of which the court below entered judgment.
Each of the fourteen claimants was paid the highest rate of wages commonly paid for services such as his.
The Court of Claims gave judgment, pro form a, in all the cases, for the claimants, and the government brought the cases here.
The meaning of the joint resolution of February 28th, 1867, it may be well here to state, had been a matter of question in this court on a previous occasion in the cases known as The Twenty per Cent. Cases; and the court then said that persons are 'properly in the civil service, if they were employed by the head of the department, or of the bureau, or any division of the department charged with that duty, and authorized to make such contracts, and fix the compensation of persons employed, even though the particular employment may not be designated in any appropriation' act. It added, that 'many persons not employed as clerks and messengers of the departments are in the public service by virtue of an employment by the head of the department or by the head of a bureau of the department authorized by law to make such contracts, and such persons are as much in the service, within the meaning of the joint resolution, as the clerks and messengers employed in the rooms of the department building.'
Mr. John Goforth, Assistant Attorney-General, for the United States:
In The Twenth per Cent. Cases, already reported, the salary or pay was fixed directly or limited indirectly by law; and was a fixed and arbitrary rate of compensation; and the person employed had no part in naming the amount to be paid him. In the cases now here, the compensation was not fixed or limited by any law or by the head of any department or division, but was the highest ruling rate in the market for similar labor, and was fixed by the person employed, and changed by him as the market changed. The wages were under the restriction of no statute, and the services were such as might be rendered to any employer.
In the former Twenty per Cent. Cases, this court, in its opinion, said:
'Certain described persons and classes of persons are plainly entitled to the benefit of the provision, whether regarded as officers or as mere employees, and it is no valid argument against that proposition to show that there are or may be other employees or persons in the civil service here who are not within that description, as the terms of the enactment are special and do not extend to every employment in that service, but only to the described persons and classes of persons therein mentioned.'The claimants in the present cases belong to classes different from those in the case cited. Some are connected with the military service, and not with the civil at all.
The last two claimants are clearly excluded. One, Hoffman, performed his work outside the limits of Washington; and one, Bell, was a contractor for finished work.
The repeal of the joint resolution of February 28th, 1867, prevented the officers of the treasury after its passage from paying the twenty per cent., and left the Court of Claims without jurisdiction of any action for the recovery of anything thereunder. It is true that statutes in general apply only to cases that may hereafter arise. Such an act as this-an act repealing other acts, &c.-cannot in its nature operate on future acts. It applies to existing acts.
Messrs. N. P. Chipman, J. Daniels, and A. P. Culver, contra, relied on The Twenty per Cent. Cases, and the language showing its intended scope, as conclusive.
As for the act of July 12th, 1870, they argued that the real purpose of that act was to cut off a general class of extra compensation which had crept into various statutes; the cutting off of which in future, Congress though advisable; and, for obvious reasons, that it could have no reference to a case where the compensation had been allowed, and where presumably (as in the great majority of cases in fact) it had been received three years before.
Mr. Justice CLIFFORD delivered the opinion of the court.

## Notes

* ↑ 14 Stat. at Large, 569.
* ↑ 16 Stat. at Large, 250, § 4.
* ↑ 13 Wallace, 576.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States federal government (see 17 U.S.C. 105).
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