The Osceola times., 1885-08-29
WASHINGTON LETTER
(From Onr REGULAR Correspondent

!
Life is comparatively easy in
Washington just now. The heat
of last week has subsided from hf.
teen to twenty degrees. Men have
resumed their collars, neck-ties and
coats. Women have resumed-but
! ] can not go into particulars. The
President has taken to the woods.
The Cabinet is divided Geographic
ally only. The Postmaster Gener-
al is in Madison, Wisconsin. The
Secretary of War is in Salem, Mass
The Secretary of State oscillates be-
tween his home in Delaware and
the Department in Washington. The
other Secretaries, | believe, are at
their posts, but have just returned
to Washington after two weeks
absence, and must make the con-
fession, unparalleled 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 sys-
temized and pushed as at present.
This is the comment of all who have
long had business with Pension,
Patent, Lands, 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
aud shirkes; new life, new energy,
and old-fashoined honesty have been
infused into the complicated and
lahyrinthinc system through which
the affairs of 55,000,000 of people
are administered. That so much
has been accomplished m FIVE months
is remarkable; but then it must be
remembered tina. this has been done
by "raitors' and "rebels" whose
sole object, as predicted by the only
truly good Republican party-was
to "disrupt, paralyze, and ruin"
The wonderful changes which can
be effected in a Governments Office
by the introduction of the thorough
" business methods, in place Of the
methods formerly i'll vogue, is strik
ingly apparent in the Pension Office
at this time. The working force
of the bureau is ll0 short of the
full number employed under the old
Administration. Besides this, pa
of the clerks are absent OH their an
nual leave, and there are thirty alb
sent sick. Notwithstanding this de-
crease in the working force, amount
ing altogether to 354 clerks, with
out any heightened hours or over
working of the force, is as large as
was done by the full staff Of clerks
under Commissioners Dudley, and it
is rapidly 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 be-
yond this there nave been but few
changes recently.
The loud and braggart glori6ca-
hon of the Republican party, when
the count of money in the Treasury
Department showed no loss, has not
vet ceased to reverberate IN the land ,
but that is not the way the truly
good officials of the truly good party
have replenished their exchequers.
Investigations now pending, and
others that the country will hear OF
soon, will conyince the most skept-
ical that an examination of the books,
aud an elimination of the crooks,
have come none too soon. The Re-
publicans are trying to take political
comfort from the fact, AS they put
it, that the implicated officials who
were lately dismissed 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 Republicanism is helped
any by the discovery. The fact re
mains that whatever irregularities
existed were continued under repub'
lcan rule, and that it remained fol
Democratic Administration to eX'
pose them and apply the necessary
corrective. The country is not s.
much concerned Just now about the
politics of in liviCua rascals, as j is I
having rascalities stopped. 1t is up
on the latter point that the recorC
will be made up.