Waterbury evening Democrat., 1904-12-13
WARES DIFFICULT POST
Experiences of the Commis.
 sioner of Pensions.
LACK OF PRIVACY AT HIS DESK.

From Ills Ofhce to Q Railway Train.
 Trouble In Bringing His Force Un-
 der DAscip1Ine--The wigg1nS XncH-
 dent ana Its EMect. .....-
 The retiring commissioner of pen sions, Eugene F. Ware, is coming in for good deal of comment these days, some mirthful and some sardonic, as was perhaps to be expected in the case of a man of his strongly individual mold, says the New York Posts Wash ington correspondent
 The new commissioner had not been in office a month before he discovered that the task set him was more than poor human nature-at least his poor human nature could compass. AL though MT. Ware has made no secret of his intention to quit public work as early as he can be spared this winter, he has not gone yet, and will not go till everything is ready for the in stallation of his successor.
 One of the things which MT. Ware has found it hardest to endure is the utter absence of privacy at such 8 desk as his. Responsible for the han ding of $15O, ,ooO, GOO a year. he has hard ly been given, since he entered upon his duties thirty months ago, an hour for uninterrupted labor in his room. The office seekers, the attorneys, the hard luck story telIers, the applicants for somebody's promotion, have squat ted upon him whenever, he has been most anxious to study case in quiet He had not been in his place year before having struggled in vain for weeks to read thoroughly the papers in connection with most important piece of business he gave up in despair and, rolling the documents up in a bundle, walked out of the pension building without saying a word to any, one. He sought a railway station and inquired at what time the next train started.
 aFor where?'' asked the ticket agent.
 tOh, anywhereI don't care-any- where good way off!"
 There is a train. just about to start for Charleston, S. C., if that will do"
 'aThat suits me- Give me ticket"
 In a few minutes he was speeding on his way southward, with no very defl- nite idea of his actual destination. In the early hours of the morning the cars were thrown off the track by a broken down freight train ahead A number of his fellow passengers were hurt, and he busied himself earnestly in putting them to rights as we'll as might be. Then he hunted up hotel and took room, where he continued the task of delving into the papers on which he had begun on the train. The next day be pushed on to Charleston, took a little exercise viewing the his- toric places in and about the city and then plunged into work again at ho- tel At night he started for Washing ton and on arriving returned to his desk as if he had never been away, although the whole ofice had been in a blue funk over his temporary disap- pearance. But he had his case mas tered and settled to his satisfaction. f,y.Mr. Ware has been much annoyed at the personal conduct and habits of the clerks under him. He found himself obliged to adopt cast iron rule on the subject of intemperance, declaring that wherever case of immoderate drinking was proved against an em- ployee it should be treated as ground for dismissal and that man dismiss ed for that cause should never come back, no matter whose sinfiooence'' he might be able to muster in his behalf. x Next he undertook to straighten out the tangles which resulted from the failure of clerks to pay their debts. Duns and attorneys had made them selves a nuisance about the building, where at first they would visit employ ees to collect money from them, and then,7 when, forbidden to penetrate the working rooms, would lie in wait at the doors and catch delinquents com ing in or going out. The commissioner prepared rule making it cause for dismissal for clerk to leave his debts unpaid, to the Interruption of his in- gress and egTess and the scandal of the service. How far he was ever able to put this into operation is not defi- nitely known.
 A few months later he adopted rule against gambling. This was primarily directed at the waste of government time by clerks who ran out during of- flee hours and took "hiers in stocks" in the bucket shops. The nuisance had acquired such dimensions as to be a source of great damage to the work of the bureau. Incidentally the new rule came to be applied to gambling at the race tracks near Washington, whither a large number of clerks were wont to repair daily during the spring and fall meetings and bet away their salaries for months in advance, to say nothing of having their minds distracted from their regular duties for all the period while this was going on. Bergman, the cartoonist of the Washington Post, made this order the subject of clever pictorial skit, which so delighted. Mir. Ware that he had it framed and hung on the wall behind his desk. It repre- sented the sporting clerks of the pen sion office gathered at the race track, each having his face covered with a mask so that the commissioner and his