Omaha daily bee., 1890-03-02

times. General Raum makes it a principle
not to lose his temper about business mat
tiers and he is as diplomatic as possible He
mis- what he can aud refuses what he
must, and dlsposes of The crowd very rap
idly. His calls continue until 2 o'clock. He
then takes a lunch ii he has not had it be-
fore. This he has in his office. 1t consists
OF a piece of beefsteak and "a biscuit with n
glass or Two of milk. He is very careful of
his health and he watches his diet. After 2
p. m. he receives the chiefs of his depart
ment, considers knotIy pension cases and
remains at work until 3 o'clock when he
drops his papers and goes home General
ttaum lives here in Washington on Rhode
Island avenue near Iowa circle. He has a
house worth at least s25, 600 and this is very
comfortably fitted. A part of the furniture
was bought recently, and his sidebuard,
which came from Grand Rapids, Mich. took
a number OF prizes at state fairs before he
purchased il.
The business OF the pension office can
hardly De appreciated. The files of It's cases
would carpet IA state If the papers were
spread out. The old documents among it's
records would make a strip as wide as a
wagon road and long enough to reach around
the whole world. 1t has settled millions of
CLAIMS ana there are now more than
FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND CASES
in the office awaiting settlement. General
Raum believes that the cases should be
made complete by the claimants and that
SUCH rases shoufd- be first passed upUu- by
him. He has given directions that all claims
IN which the evidence is complete shall be
hrst acted upon, and at the present rate Of
progress II the lawyers and claimant could
have all these 400, 900 cases ready for action
today he thinks that in seven or eight
months HIS bureau would stand even
with the world and everything would be
finished up to that date.
HIS mail is immense. The pension com
missioner gets fully three million letters u
year and 1000, COO Of these require prompt
nswer Think of 1900, OU0 letters Each
one Will contain at least "a foot of note paper
aud III you would paste the sheets together
the mail received by this man la a single
year would make a ribbon six inches wide
longer than from New York to Cleveland.
Estimating each letter as costing u two-cent
stamp 1t makes $780, 900 for postage. ana when
you inquire up the labor and brains, the
worry and trouble, YOU have embodied q
number of lifetimes In this one item. Ten
Thousand letters a day. Seventy Thousand
letters a week! More than three
what the pension office mail amounts
to. Thu most of the letters are, however,
managed by clerks, and the pension office
postofice and distributing room is as big as
that OF many a village postohice. Nearly
every letter requires research aud many OF
them consume several sheets of note PAPER,
Nevertheless, about ten thousand are au-
swered every day. The letters received
from congressman amount to about one
thousand a day, and eongressmen's letters
must always be answered. More than two
thousani pension cases are settled every
week, aud during the last six days | ,40S inya-
llds have received pensions and 54S pensions
nave been granted widows, 6l3 men have
been granted an increase OF pensions, and
l,1S3 new clalms have been admitted. At
present there are nearly half a million claims
pending In the pension office, and the depart.
nent Is paying out more than q million and a
half or dollars in pensions every
week. 1t is the biggest business
OF the kind in the world, and IL grows big
ger every year.
Let me tell you something about the build
ing IN which this immense business is trans
acted. IL is the
BIGGEST BRICK UILDING IN THE WORLD,
and its mighty roof covers two acres OF
ground. IL Is made Of red pressed brick, q
mighty three-story structure with a great
glass roof rising. tier by tier, over il. The
biggest brick structure of the past was the
baths OF Dlocletian, the ruins of which stand
by the Nazionale In Rome. These baths
were a mile in circumference; their interior
was finished in marble and Egyptian granite
and they had 3, 1000 marble seats for bathers.
wonderful mosaics covered its floors, hot
and cold water continuously flowed for the
use OF the bather, and the dirtiest of ple-
beians could have access TO them for
one-eighth OF u cent a time. II
\ may be that General Meigs had this
immense structure in his mind when he
modelled this pension building. II 10 made
after the Roman palaces Of the hftoenth cen