The Cambria freeman. [volume] (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1867-1938, 1885-08-21
WASHINGTON LETTER.


| From our regular Correspondent.
| WASHINGTON, August II, 1885.
Life is comparatively easy in Wash
! inpton lust now. The heat of last weel
/ has subsidized from fifteen to twenty de
gress. Men have resumed their col.
/ lars. neck-ties and coats. Women
have eresumed-but / cannot go into par
ticulars. TIE President has taken 70
she woods. The Cabinet i5 divided
geographically only. The POSTMASTER
General is in Madison, Wisconsin. The
Secretary of War is in Salem. Mass.
The Secretary of State oscillates be
tween his home iu Delaware and the
department IN Washington. The other
Secretaries 7 believe. are a t their posts
but have fust returned to washing.
ton after two weeks absence. and
must make the confession, unparalleled
in journalism, that there are one or TWO
things that 1 do not know.
The work in all the departments has
not been for years so we'll systemized
and pushed as at present. This is the
comment OF all who have long had busi-
ness 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 places of drones and
shiTks; new life, new energy, and old
fashioned honesty have been infused
into the complicated and labyrInthine
system through which the affairs of
81, 900, 600 of people are administered.
That so much has been accomplished in
five months is remarkable; but then it
must be remembered that his has been
done by traitors and rebels whose
sole object, as predicted by the only
truly good Republican party-was to
'diSrnpt; paraliZe, and ruin.'
The wonderful changes which can be
effected in a Government office by the
introduction of thethoroughly business
methods, ia place of the methods form
eTly in vogue, is strikingly apparent in
the Pension office at this time. The
working force OF the bureau is 110
short of the full number employed under
the old administration. Besides this,
214 of the clerks are absent on their ar
nual 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 rapidly augmenting.
Recently there has been one or two
clerks, both Democrats and Republi-
cans, 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 braggaTt gloriication
of the Republican party, when the count
of money in the Treasury department
showed no loss, has not yet ceased to
reverberate in the land, bnt that is not
the way the truly good officials of the
truly good party have replenished their
exchequers. Investigations DOW pend
ing, and others that the country will
bear of soon, will convince the most
skeptical that an examination OF the
books, and an elimination o. the crooks
have come none too soon. The Repub-
licans are trying to take political CON-
fort from the fact, as they put it, that
the implicated officials who we're lately
dismissed from the Coast Survey office
are all Democrats. This is not true;
but even if it we're so, it is not easy to
see how the cause of Republicanism is
helped any by the discovery. The fact
remains that Whatever irregularities ex-
listed we're continued under Republican
rule, and that it remained for a Demo
cratic Administration to expose them
The country is not so much concerned
just now about the politics of individual
Tascals, as it is in having rascalities
stopped. 1t is upon the latter point
that the record will be made up. W.