McCook weekly tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 188?-1886, 1884-08-14
WASHINGTON LETTER.

particularly proud of her hostelries, sh,
never supposed that any of them wer,
so depraved as to tumble down upon tn,
heads of guests without a moment
warning. Yet such was the case will
the United States Hotel last Sunday
whose walls slew five persons outright
and MANNED a score more. A kline
Providence postponed for an hour the
casualty that would have overwhelmed
sixty guests who were at the table in
in the dimng-room. How many more
of these ramshackle man-traps there are
in the city, no one knows out the Build
ing Inspector, and he won't tell. While
Yankee ingenuity is being put to its
best to devise fire-escapes, new kind
of horror presents itself, against which
there can be no protection save the
faithful discharge of the duty of those
assigned to look after just such speci-
mems of rottenness as this. By the
second volume of the "Blue Book, :"
which has just made its appearance, we
are made acquainted with good many
of the minor details of office holding
which fail to reach us through the ordi-
nary channels. The "Blue Book" no
longer ago than the reign of Mr.. Bu-
chanan, was a volume containing not
more than one hundred and sixty pages.
The enormous multiplication of offices
necessitates now two volumes of thou
sand pages and more each, which are
published every two years for the use of
Congress. The second volume which
pertains distinctively to the Post Office
Department, informs us that there are
upwards of so, 200 postmasters In the
country, who receive salaries ranging
from nine cents, received by the post
master at Redalia, n c., to $4,000, re-
ceived by the postmaster at New York
City. There are 2, 400 of these post
masters who receive a salary of less than
SO per annum, and yet not one of the
2,4oO would resign except under the
weightiest kind of consideration. When
postmasters were paid salaries in pro-
portion to the number of stamps sold,
there was lively interest in being post
master even at the smallest crossroads
office, and the demand for stamps from
all these small Offices became so great
that Uncle Sam began an investigation,
only to find that postage stamps had be-
come the staple currency of the realm
and entered into all sorts of trade, COM
merce and barter. Then Congress STEP
ped in and said that salaries should be
paid in accordance with the number of
stamps cancelled at the Office, and this
has cancelled much of the desire to be
country postmaster. Beside the nine
cent postmaster in North Carolina there
are thirty-four others in the country
whose salary does not reach 81 per year, !
and dozen of these are in North Carroll
liza which State contributes just one
ninth as much postal revenue as the cost
of transporting her mails. Ordinarily |
the work of making up quarterly re-
port in country post office, requires a
well-balanced mind, patience beyond
that of Job, and a full week of time.
In ninety-seven cases out of one hun
bred, the work is not then done to the
satisfaction of the department, and the
whole business is returned to the exas-
perated postmaster to be done all over
again, and that postmaster does not live
in the United States who sends in his
report to Washington without serious
and, | might say, absolute
certainty that it will come back for re-
A hundred years of postal
service IN which the methods of keeping
postal accounts have not received the
slightest simplifcation, have furnished
our mad-houses with most of the inmates
that politics and religion have to answer
for
Ex-Speaker Kiefer having defed the
newspaper men to do their worst, has re-
ceived the full benefit of their attentions,
and his political cadaver is now lying in
state at Springfield, Ohio. Not news
paperin his district could be cajoled into
his support for denomination land there
fore Kiefer started one of his own, with
ba ucal dISo IRONS rocu1{s fhof oo,,o oP |