Connecticut western news., 1883-04-25
A CITY'S CLERKS.
Party of Young Men that Need Look
 ing After.

No" 1oAh oIUJ, IIOIul1ouG ClIy OulClil said to a Herald reporter, that his only surprise was that the Finance Depart ment did not "take tumble" to the defaulting clerk, as the saying is, long Def ore his death.
 The reporter asked if the city official knew of his own knowledge that Carroll was addicted to gambling and fast com pany, and he replied:- No, I only knew him in casual way, but I knew that he could not have lived as he did on $1, 100 a year, and that if the way he lived is explained by the fact that his father supplied him with money the old man must have had to pay mighty big sum yearly. But to my mind there is more ample field for investigation than can be found in the books of the dead clerk and that is in the various departments of the city government. I'll guarantee that there is not one clerk in one hundred in the departments who has received his exclusively because of his peculiar fitness for his duties. Political backing is the force which filings him into position, as it were, and there he stays so long as his political backing is good and on the right side of the fence. What is the consequence of this kind of to office? Why, that the city government business is being run by @ set of men who were never asked for recommendations from their previous employers and who, in hardly one case out of five, would have been able to obtain such recommendations if they wanted them. The city officials don't act like business men when they want clerks in their own offices. When 8 clerk on $1, ,O00 year salary is known to own 8 fast horse and to dress like 8 nabob and live in the best of style in one of the swell sections of the city his em- ployer naturally says to himself, Hello, somebody must be paying for this, and he not only watches that young mans books, but finds out the kind of com pany he keeps, and in short time he finds it profitable to discharge that young man. The city officials do not act in this way.
 "A large proportion of the clerks and employees in the city departments in places of more or less trust, are fre- quenters of gambling saloons and other places of il-repute, and they are to be found everywhere where sports congre- gate, and the fast and loose methods are considered the proper thing"
 The reporter here suggested that this was sweeping general charge.
 sIt seem so to you," said the official, "but you can get the facts for yourself. Go any night you please to the fast re- sorts inN Y. city, make round of them, and if you don't find city employees putting up the wine and having good time generally in most of these places, am much mistaken. Go to Saratoga in the summer time and Long Branch, and who are the men you trip up on every once in while in the club-houses and on the road? Why, city officials and city employees on @ vacation. It's all very we'll for the young men to tell you that the old man is putting up the money for him, when you find him open ing wine at Moons every night, and making big swing for two or three weeks at time in the Grand or United States Hotels, or at the West End. The fathers of our city employees are not rich men as rule, and the thing don't wash. I don't mean to say, mind you, that these men live on money taken dis honestly from the city, for that, perhaps, could not be proved; but I do mean that their salaries are not big enough to pay for the way they live, and that the fact that they frequent gambling-saloons, are to be seen at the roulette table fre- quently, and wherever the game of chance holdsrout tempting hand, is 8 significant one.
 "How they manage to dress as we'll as most of them do, sport diamonds and drive fast horses is thing that would be explained in forty-eight hours if they were the employees of private business IrulS. bub bIO SAoy OA4P1oJOCo ol pIlC
 class I speak of make no attempt to
 cover their tracks. What they do they
 do openly, for the reason that they are
 not held to account for their associations,
 have nothing to fear from being seen
 nightly in places where no cashier or
 trusted employee of bank would care to
 be seen. and, indeed, so far from being
 called to account, they not infrequently
 come across the heads of their depart
 ments in these very places. The thing
 is scandal, and it is time that those al
 the head of affairs should look into the
 references of their employees before they
 are employed. In many cases I think
 the reform could be we'll begun by some
 of the heads of departments turning ovel
 new leaf themselves.