The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-07-19
WASTE BASKET EXAMINERS.
Two Women in the Treasury De-
partment Who Look for stray
bonds,

partment VINO LOOK TOT StFaS
Bonds.
From the Philadelphia Press.
"Oficial Examiner of the Waste
Basket"-such is the title conferred on
two women at the treasury. Nor is the
title a vain one. The women are classed
as experts" and their duties are reck-
oned important.
From to 4 O'Clock each day, except
Sunday. they may be found in the
basement of the big and dirty gray
brown building wherein Uncle Sans
sinews of commerce and war, peace
and prosperity are kept. Hour by hour
they carefully go through the big piles
of waste paper dumped out for their
critical inspection from the capacious
maws of the hundreds of baskets,
which are supposed to catch the litter
of officials and CLERKS from Secretary
| Shaw down. It is the word Sup
! posed" that gives these experts en-
ployment. Too often a document or pa
per of value slips inadvertently into the
baskets. and were it not for the watch
| full eyes Of these women would find its
way into the fiery furnace of destruc-
ton.
People have been wont to joke about
the ridiculous titles that certain gov
eminent employees bear and in pop
ular farce of a few years ago there
was character who styled himself
the official cleaner of government Gus
pidOrs. But there are, in fact two
official examiners of waste baskets in
the Treasury Department.
,7acasSifU Of aY11D1OUaS of this
kind will be realized at once, when it
is known that drafts. vouchers and
| bonds worth anywhere from 81 up to
| 900 and even more, are handed
about and sent from one room to an
other as though they were of no more
! value than so much cambria. Ere
uuently the carelessness of a messen-
ger permits one of these slips of paper,
representing many hundreds, and even
| thousands, of dollars, to fall into a
waste basket. A sudden gust of wind
may carry bond from a chiefs desk
! and toss it into the same re-
ceptable, while a hurried official may
tear in half a draft for a large sum
of money and throw the pieces into
the basket. Until the adoption of The
| present system of examining the con-
tents of these baskets at the end of
each day all mishaps of this sort were
past immediate correction. While they
did not always result in the actual loss
of the face value of each paper, they
invariably caused a great deal of trou-
BILE and annoyance. Banks that or
dered shipments of notes failed to get
their money until weeks after the time
it should have been delivered. Then
again, the disappearance of an impor-
tant draft or voucher created more
or less suspicion as to the honesty Of
employees and kept the treasurer in con-
slant hot water. Now most of this
trouble is avoided through the skill
of the lynx-eyed examiners, who ex-
anime every article that goes into the
bakets
There is a well-regulated system for
handling this work. Every basket in
the building is numbered a tag tell
ing in what room and to what clerk
a. z$>plongs. Each employe has two
such baskets, which are used on al
ternate days. One set is examined
one day and the other set is looked
over the following day. The baskets
are brought into the examiners room
exactly as they are left by the clerks.
The general orders throughout the
department are that no scrap of paper
shall be thrown into a basket without
being first torn in halves. So the ex-
aminers are on the lookout for official
documents, and especially for papers
that have not been torn. All papers
of this description are laid aside after
being labeled with the number of the
basket from which they were taken.
1t frequently happens that much of
the stuff picked out in this way is of
no value, but not long ago one of the
women engaged on this work found a
$4,000 United States bond.
1t is the duty of the charwomen TO
give a casual glance through waste
packets before they are carried to the
room of the examiners. A few weeks
ago the chief clerk of the department
threw into his basket worthless cir
cular which was folded in the shape
of an official document. He failed to
disfigure it and the next morning he
was somewhat mystified to find the
paper on his desk again. He tossed it
into the basket a second time. but the
next morning 1t was on his desk as
usual. A third time the process was
repeated, and the chief clerk finally
| learned that the faithful charwoman
was the person who persistently res
cued the document that he was anx-
ious to get rid of.