The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-08-05
DEPARTMENT RED TAPE.
Anticipated Methods OF TrnnsactinE
Government Business.

government
Washington Letter in Boston Transcript.
Secretary Shaw has set big wind blow
ing through the Treasury Department by
his widely quoted remark that he was OPP
posed 10 keeping persons in office there
longer than five years. a number OF the
men who have grown gray in the service
have become uneasy and begun 10 look over
their records TO see what they have done
which would furnish special ground Tor
their retention as exceptions to this rule
Not since Logan Carlisle gave out that he
had loaded his dismissal sun and started
on hunt for Indispensable" has so much
nervousness been visible among the old
timers.
Now this was undoubtedly what Secre-
tary Shaw had in view. He wished 10 pro-
duce results OF some real benefit 10 the
department and the public He has already
discovered two things: One is that the de-
partment is still continuing TO do certain
parts of its work on the same lines as
forty years ago. when the business trans
acted there was an Insignificant fraction of
what 1t is now; another is that the instant
a new secretary proposes to change these
methods he is met with the assurance from
a score Of lips that lit cannot be done"
Perhaps a man of different temperament
might respond: II am sure ii can be done.
and 1 will study IL out and show you how"
Mr.. Shaw prefers TO teach his subordinates
self-dependence, so he says: 1T can be
done. and you must find a way 20 do 1t.
III you are unable TO, it is probably the
fault of your age. which has passed the
plant stage; or else you have got to run
ming in a groove which you are yearly
wearing deeper, so that you are making IL
more and more difficult, If not impossible,
TO get out In either event it is plain that
fresher and more resourceful man would
DO better in your place.
If the old-timers are able to interpret
Alright Secretary Shaws recent utterance
they will tackle the reformation of their
instance in point, the disposal of the de-
partmental mail. The incrustatons OF
years OF Bureaucratic elaboration have re-
duced the speed OF this bit OF machinery
till person of ordinary business training
is almost maddened when he is obliged 10
depend upon it. Mail deposited in the city
postoffice night reaches the treasury
the following morning in time for the
clerks TO go 10 work at IL by o CLOCK yet
II is not till the early afternoon that letters
are placed on the secretarys desk which he
ought TO have had at the opening OF ousl-
ness. Then comes a sitting and distributing
process, for hundreds of persons unac-
quainted with the subdivisions of treasury
work address the secretary on SUBJECTS
which fall within some subordinate juris-
diction. Unless the secretary sends spe-
clal messenger with each one to the officer
involved 1t is not till the next day that
referred communication reaches its des-
tination in the proper bureau. Here again,
presumptlvely, there is sitting process,
and nearly every letter is passed along to
one of the chiefs of division, who in his
turn assigns it's perusal and answer TO
clerk. Thus another day is spent.
The following morning this clerk, perhaps
awaiting his opportunity by standing in a
line, letter in hand, and thus losing an hour
of good time, brings his answer, in first
draft, TO the attention of his chief. The
chief considers il with him, amends il
where necessary and then hands the cor
rected text to a typewriter to put into neat
form on official stationery. When this is
done the answer is placed, with lot of
Perhaps he gets around to IL before he goes
home in the evening and puts his initials
on the corner of the sheet as an 30. *,
but that is another day gone.
On the next, the bureau chief finds the
answer among the pile of manuscript let
ters on his desk. for further initiating, and
tries to attend to it before he goes out to
luncheon. Between then and o'clock the
answer goes back to the secretary bearing
the two sets of initials, which shows him
who is responsible for the information con-
veyed. After he has attached his own sig
nature a negro messenger takes the sheet
and runs 1t through the copying press
Then it is laid out to dry. AS the hour for
everybody to stop work and go home is
o'clock. the chances are that although
this messenger puts the dried sheet into
it's right envelope and carries the envelope
to the mail room, ii is too late to go out
that afternoon, and then the sun has got
well up in the heavens for another day be-
fore the clerks in the city postoffice are
able to throw the document into the proper
box or bag for its final journey to destina-
ton.
If citizen of Denison, Ia. should adj
dress letter one evening to Mr.. Shaw's
bank, asking an ordinary business question,
the mail distributed the next morning
would deliver the inquiry to the bank, and
the mail which closed when the bank did
that afternoon would contain the response.
If John Smith wishes the name of the at
torney of record in a certain claim case ad-
Indicated at the treasury in 1885, he can go
to the department himself and get his in
formation in a half hour, more or less, by
direct application. But if William Jones
relying on the fact that he knows the sec
rotary personally, drops Dear Mr.. Shaw
a letter asking the same question he waits
four or five days for his answer. Is il Won
derful that Mr.. Shaw, lawyer and banker,
concludes that there is a wasteful and
wrong method behind the eSasperating de-
lays heb sees TO be the rule in the CORE
spondence of his department? And if he
finds his efforts for improvement blocked by
assurances that improvement is impossible,
or that the persons accountable for the
delays have never, IN any experience of a
dozen or twenty years, been required to
stay at their work after o'clock and clean
it up, is it strange that he lets drop the
remark that a government emplOye who
has been In the office five years seems
TO have outgrown his usefulness?
Mr.. Shaw is not a civil service reformer
in the professional or technical sense. Mel
ther Is he although pretty resOurceful
political leader. a spokesman in the sense of
wishing 70 load himself or the government
down. He has therefore no prejudces to
favor and no dull axes to grind in over
hauling nPrSOnnpl where
weakest from a business point of view
There is apparently no need of alarm on
the part of any wide-awake well-equipped
man in the treasury under the five-year
diSnAnSafinn