Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1881-06-13
1ancaster fntelhgenrer.
Legislative Blunderers.

MONDAY EVENING. JUNE. ID, 1881.
Legislative Blunderers.
The Philadelphia Times has been in
vestigating the amount of the services
rendered the state by the employees of
the Legislature, and finds that out OF
twenty-five persons holding various
positions about the state capital, who
were appointed from Philadelphia, nine
performed some service, and these were
generally pages g of the remaining six
teen few put in an occasional appear
aDce, some employed substitutes at lower
wages and some did not even make a
pretence of earning the salaries which
they drew" These men were the
henchmen of particular senators or
representatives, and got their places
in reward for their political and personal
service rendered them. The doorkeeper
of the Senate, the chief messenger of the
House, assistant messengers OF both
houses, firemen and clerks, were among
those who did no service, while punctu-
ally drawing their liberal salaries. The
pastors and folders did a little better;
for they are reported to have each con-
tributed dollar day, out of their COM
pensation of six dollars for the same
time, to pay other men for doing their
work. Two dollars day sufiiced to
hire these substitutes, and two pastors
and folders clubbed together and found
one man willing to do the allotted work
OF two.
This is not an original discovery of the
Times, scandalOus as the facts are nor
are only the Philadelphia officers and
representatives guilty Of these wrongs.
We have ourselves shown that Lancas-
ter county men play the same game. One
of our citizens has taken his thousand
dollars as fireman, without ever seeing
the capital fires, and another has inform
ed US, rs we have heretofore published,
that he employed a substitute at dollar
a day to do his work as paster and folder.
1t seems to be we'll settled around the
capital that one man at two dollars a
day is equal to the duty of two pastors
and folders at twelve dollars day.
And the thought that will strike the
people of the state with great force in
contemplating these facts is as to how
they could exist without being known to
their senators and representatives :;
since everyone else around the
capital seems to have been very familiar
with them and the newspaper editors
have made the people at home acquainted
with them. To maintain fair opinion
of their representatives attention to
their interests, their constituents must
believe that they don't read their home
newspapers and dent know what is
going on right under their own eyes !;
that they cannot see, for instance, that
their door-keepers and messengers are
not attending to their conspicuous duties,
and don't observe that but one-half the
number of pastors and folders are on
hand and they not the men they elected.
This theory of ignorance on the part
of senators and representatives evidently
cannot lie accepted with satisfaction. A
few might he 50 unObservant and stupid,
but how could all be ? And yet not one
has interfered to stop this treasury grab.
Can it he that they feel delicacy about
Objecting to their employees securing a
compensation they had not earned be-
cause they themselves were intent upon
pocketing their own extra $500 that they
were not Is strictly" entitled to? Is it
an unwritten law, observed with scru-
pulous fidelity at Harrisburg, that every
man in the capital is entitled to take
from the state all that he can grab ?
Or what other plausible theory will ac-
count for the blindness of honorable SEN
ators and representatives to the fleecing
of the state by the employees 1t is easy
enough to see that the particular legis-
lators who had these officers appointed
rs their personal friends and adherents,
would be quite willing to keep quiet about
their absence from duty and the extrav-
agance of their compensation and even
why Republican senators should be re-
luctant to make noise about the pen
siOning on the state of their party work.
ers. But wherefore the silence of Dem
Ocrats and wherefore their reluctance
to uncover this sore for the good as we'll
of the state rs of their party, to say
nothing of their own consciences =?
Is it another exhibition of that "sena-
tOrial courtesy" of which we have heard
SO much as compelling the consciences of
senators at Washington Did the ex-
cellent Democratic senators sit quiet
under the continued absence of chief
dOor-keeper Lambert, out of regard for
the feelings Of Senator Reyburn. whose
friend he was or did their regard for
Senator Norris prevent them from not
ing that the chairman of the convention
which nominated him for the Senate
was not doing the pasting and folding
for which they voted that he should be
paid six dollars day
A little light would be in order from
the very respectable Democrats who
represent the party in both chambers.
Railroad BslloonIng.