The Hartford herald. [volume] (Hartford, Ky.) 1875-1926, 1885-06-10
Washington Letter.
From our regular correspondent
WASHINGTON. Nav 30. 1855.


WASHINGTON, May 80, 1885.
Editor Herald:
Since | last wrote you change has
come over the bright illusion of official
security in tue breasts ola large num-
berof Republican Office holders There
have been numerous dismlssals during
the past week, and nine tenths of
those who remain see ever before them
the Damocles sword labeled "your
turn next" The dismissals have been
chiefly for offensive craftsmanship and
also for dishonesty, insobriety and gen.
eral unfitness. The new Administers
ton Is beginning to know its ground, get
its hand in and to overcome its native
bashfulness. 1t will learn more day by
day, and the rascals will go, and go
with accelerated velocity.
The recently appointed chiefs of Bu-
reau 10 whose attention cases of sus-
pected wrong doing has been brought,
feel themselves handicapped by the
Republican clerks who are subordinate
to them, but upon whom they cannot
depend for co operation. When papers
are referred to these clerks for investi-
CATION and report, they are placed i'm
possession of the movements of the ene-
my, and they are quick to take advan-
tage of their confidential position, and
to play the traitor by informing inter-
terested parties outside the depart
ments that an investigation threatens.
Ii is not difficult to see how valuable
and important such information Is to
the old rings and ringsters that have
had and still have this underground
wire and back-stairs connection with
the Treasury and other Government
departments. Clerks who have been
in collision. and actually in guilty
partnership, with claimants and others
dealing with the government, obtain
the earliest information of proposed ill.,
designations, and are enabled to cover
up suspicious appearances and fore
warn their outside accomplies.
The disadvantage of Democratic Of
ficials is that they stand solitary and
helpless at the heads of their depart
ments with no subordinate whom they
can trust. They are in the condition of
of General whose army is treacher>
ously servile and whose sentinels are
colleagues of the enemy. The new
Administration will never recover the
Holy Cross of political purity at the
head of host of Republican inf
dels.
The discharges for offensive partisan-
ship during the past week have beer
chiefly from Post Offices, and a ma
jority of them have been in Virginia,
but every day witnesses number of
discharges from the Departments here
IN this city. They consist chiefly of
those clerks who We're absent from their
desks during the late campaign, max
ing speeches for Blaine, organizing Re-
/ publican clubs, and doing other cam
paign work while drawing pay as
clerks. This rule of offensive partizan.
ship, if impartially applied, will STAY
its thousands. A Government clerk
has no more business to be an active par
tisan, than u bank clerk or hod car
rier. He is employed to do certain
clerical work, and he should do that
work not AS Republican or Demo
crat, but as clerk. When he neg
lects TO do the work he should be AS
peremptorily discharged, as would he
if he were clerk in any private BUSH
ness house.
Apart from discharges and rumors of
discharges, clerical life i'm the immense
Counting House of Uncle Sam is not
what it used to be. There is more
work, less play, and better health. The
Republican employee has a gloomy,
carewOrn face, but he is keeping better
hours, and bringing forth fruit meet for
repentance. Officers that haye been
for years in arrears with their work are
now up to date. Since ii has been
given out that protracted absence from
sickness shall be without pay, and that
any absence shall be subtracted from
the thirty days vacation allowed each
clerk, there has been u remarkable
decline of sham sickness.