The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-07-31
ministration they reappear again ir

or the hundreds Of applicants whe
 daily poster the heads of the depart
 mehts not one in ten ever gets an ap'
 pointment. and generally those that do
 are the ones who make the least ef'
 fort, but so about il in the right and only way.
 Applicants do not seem to understand
 that the fewer personal calls on The ap' pointing power the more apt she or he Is 10 get an appointment The most successful applicants are those who first get the endorsement Of the senators from the state. the representa- tives from the district In which they live. call once with the representative on the appointing power and then place the application on iile and await developments. letting the matter rest entirely with the congressman 10 do as he thinks best.
 One thing which has been noticeable among the applicants for these minor positions paying up as high as s.ooo Is the lack of male applicants. especial ly from states somewhat distant from the District of Columbia The hard times of the. past year has. however. forced many Into becoming applicants for these places.
 AS It Is. very few people can afford to come to Washington to run the chance Of getting clerkship which may pay them a thousand dollars. and it Is this lack of good material from outside states that makes the number of officeholders from the district so great and nearly all of the clerkships ranging from s3s0 to sl.Ooo are held by residents of the district. over one-third of whom are women.
 Once having obtained the much cov- eted position. and being sworn In. the chief clerk of the department assigns the clerk to some room or division. and she or he, as the case may be, becomes full fiedged government employe and the applicant at once becomes aware that to work for the government means work and not play. Every clerk has to report to the chief of the room or division. and be ready to start int to work promptly at o'clock. and from then until l2 it means steady hammer lnG at typewriting machine, examin- ing records or doing a hundred and one other things as the case may be, no matter how hot the weather.
 Then comes a half hour for luncheon and then again until o'clock work continues without interruption. At 4 o'clock all work ceases and the build ings pour forth streams of clerkship humanity until fifteen minutes later no one but the heads Of departments, a few messengers and the watchmen in the building. the heads of departments rarely getting away be- fore or [ in the evening. After office hours in summer. the clerks generally go down the Potomac river for recrea- tion, and in the winter social amuse- nents are the go, and from what I can learn few of these clerks save any although lirink in a constant of fear that some freak of their chief or sofie change in the head of the department may bring to them the yellow envelope, which means that their resignation has been called for and that they are once more to be sent to private lie.
 Walk through any one of the big de- rartments and you see in each small room some eight-o 2, fifteen clerks, together, bending over their work and breathing the foul air of the very poorly ventilated building, some young and fresh looking, others old and haggard, and aN- with evinc- ing that air or feeling of insecurity, owing to the recent reductions In the not knowing but what their turn may come next, although they may have been in the service many years, others only few months. Tn talking with many of the older clerks, they were all of opinion that certainly in nine cases out of ten it iid not pay a person to come here to take office, who was earning a fair living at home
 At the best it was always an uncer- :ainty. with but little chance to get ahead. and eventually acquiring habits of short hours of work, and rout- ne, rendering them totally unfit for other business when they found them selves on the outside.
 Each of the clerks is entitled to thirty lays leave of absence and thirty days sick leave, with pay, and most of them gre obliged to take it all, as work in stuffy close rooms day in and day out ,auses much illness in the depart nents
 The great cry is for more room and better buildings and if congress ever gets out of the tariff muddle the short session will probably see more bills for 1ew government quarters in this city.
 CAPITOL