The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1885-08-21
The EgiS & Intelligencer
Bel Air, Md, August 81, 1885.
OUR WASHINGTON LETT
From our Regular Correspondent.

From our Regular correspondent.
WASHINGTON. August 18th, 1885.
Life is comparatively easy IN Washington just
now. The heat of last week has subsidized from
fifteen to twenty degrees. Men have resumed
has taken to the woods. The Cabinet is divided
geographically only. The Postmaster General is
in Madison, Wisconsin. The Secretary of War
is in Salem, Mass. The Secretary of State osci-
lates between his home in Delaware and the
Department at Washington. The other Score
taries, believe, are at thelr posts put have
just returned to Washington after two weeks
absence, and l must make the confession, I'M
paraleed in journalism, that there are one or TWO
things that do not know.
The work in all the Departments has not been
for years so well systemized and pushed as at
present. This is the comment of all who have
long had business with Pension, Patent, Land,
Indian and other bureaus of the Government
SERVICE Methods have been improved abuses
eradicated barnacles have been scraped off ;
competent men have been appointed in place of
drones and shirks new life, new energy, and old
fashioned honesty have been infused into the
complicated and labyrinthine system through
which the affairs of 55,0G0,OQO of people are adj
ministered. That so much has been accomplish
ed in five months is remarkable; but then 1t
must be remembered that this has been done by
TRAITORS and rebels whose sole object, as pre-
dicted by the only truly good Republican party,
was to disrupt, paralyze, and ruin.
The wonderful changes which can be effected
IN government office by the intfoduetlon OF me
methods formerly in vogue, is strikingly appar-
ent in the Pension Office at this time. The work.
ing force of the bureau is ITO short OF the full
number employed under the old Administration.
Besides this PA of the clerks are absent on their
annual leaves, and there are thirty absent Sick
Notwithstanding this decrease in the working
force, amounting altogether to 354 clerks, the
amount of work being done at the present time,
without any heightened hours or over-working
of the force, is as large as was done by the full
staff of clerks under Commissioner Dudley, and
it is rapily augmenting. Recently there have
been one or two clerks, both Democrats and
Republicans. dismissed because they relied too
much on their influence and not enough upon
their record, but beyond this there have been
but Few changes recently.
The loud and braggart glortcation of the Re-
publican party, when the count of money in the
Treasury Department showed no loss, has not yet
ceased to reverberate in the land, but that is not
the way the truly good officials of the truly good
party have repenished their exchequers. In
Vestigations now pending, and others that the
country will hear of soon, will convince the most
skeptical that an examination of the books, and
an elimination of the crooks, have come none too
SOON The Republicans are trying to take poti-
cal comfort from the fact, as they put it, that
the implicated officials who were lately dismiss
ed from the Coast Survey office are all Democrats
This is not true but even if it were so, it is not
easy to see how the cause of Republicanlsm is
helped any by the discovery. The fact remains
that whatever Irregularities existed were contiu-
ued under Republican rule, and that it reminded
for Democratic Administration to expose them
and apply the necessary corrective. The coun-
try is not so much concerned just now about the
politics of individual rascals, as it is in having
rascalities stopped. 1t is upon the latter point
that the record will be made up.