National Republican., 1883-01-05
0osrrNs1nLn LuNcn.n
Pies BuIlod and Cocktails Bcnrcd by Real
Civil Service Reform.

Pies Bullcd and Cocktails Bcnrcd by Real
Civil Service Reform.
The War Office has some new regulations
that make trouble in the camp. That is, they
would make trouble in tho camp if the adju-
tant generals clerks were in camp instead Of
in luxurious rooms. They are represented as
whetting their swords and preparing TO fight
the order that keeps them in at lunch hour,
makes them write when they want to
read, knocks the cigars out of their mouths,
and makes them stay in the rooms whore their
desks are. The luxurious rooms have sud
denly become as irksome as cells, and going
to the Office in the morning is to some Of thcm,
If we may believe what they say like going
to the guardhouse. The hostiliHes began yes.
terday, though the war has not yet progressed
TO the point of firing Well-fed clerks will
do deal of grumbling and brave
talking, but they get wonderfully tame
before it comes to firing. Tho force in COM
mand of this adiutant general who insists on
discipline, in beginning hostilities, recon-
noitercd for pie, and IL is said that the way
the clerks swept the suffers stores Off the
board was enough to remind the old veterans
of the time they went through Georgia with
Sherman. The sutler had never been en-
couraged to do more than n seventy-hve-man-
power pic business, and this was what he
was loaded for when attacked by. five
hundred clerks with fifteen minutes in which
to eat pic. The pies arc said to have hurtled,
or to have done something Of the kind, while
the commissary stood aghast, The reader can
readily see that pies for scventy-iiye divided
among 800 would give lcss than fifth Of a
pie to each clerk and If anything Is calculated
to breed insubordination it is the fifth of pic.
Armies have been ruined by these oxasperat-
| ing wcdges-split In sections and scattered
to the wind. But they had to stand it yes
terday, and now the War Office pieman will
haul in a supply TO meet the demand, and if
he is o man with good pic sense his fortune Is
made. The section of the new order that
made this trouble reads:
| The noon recess for odonspis lunch ia ahol-
| ished An lntermission from business for Uiten
| them, but this intermi.sion docs not imlly aus
horily TO leave the building in which they are on
| duty.
| Now, to turn for moment from tho startled
but prosperous pieman to the dealer in " os-
| tensiblo lunches" Jet us see how IL affects the
barrooms in the vicinity. Are they the bright
and cheerful places they were before tho bale
| ful order issued? Not by q iugful not even
| by q bottleiul, nor tumblerful. Those Cir
cumiacent barrooms are caverns Of gloom. No
glasses clink during the hour of "oStensible
| lunch," no smiling white-aproned attendant
| listens with cheerfulness to a poor joke,
and rakes in the money that has found
| its way from the Treasury through the War
| department. In fact, these whilom places of
cheerincss were practically idle all day, and
| the question that looms up is, which shall
shut up the War department or the barrooms?
Shall the crusty pieman grow fat while the
| corkpullers sit idle over the way doing only
a scant hummer business mt night2 Has a
| War department clerk no rights? Shall he
he locked into room and fed on pies to be
forced down his neck in fifteen minutes, while
the "ostensible lunches 90 out ofthe market?
Not if the warriors clerk knows himself
One might as well do q days work at once as
to seem to have clorSship and not get an
hour or two in the middle Of the day TO treat
and be treated talk and listen, smoke and
be smoked. What does Gen. Drum mean
by reforming his branch of the SER
vice before the bill is enmossed or
printed? This is civil service, indeed, and
the brave boys who are clerks for the warriors
of the nation are getting taste Of it along
with their pie Other clauses in the order
permit no struggling in or dawdling about in
the morning SO the mitigation of an over
night drunk cannot be INDUCED. 1t is the
most demoraizing morality that ever found
enforcement, and it is a pretty glum time for
the clerks and the barrooms.