Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1910-07-02
Offices of Commissioners Be-
sieged by Applicants.
ONLY HALF A DOZEN JOBS
But There Are Over 5000 Persons
Who Want Them.
ALL ARE HIGHLY ENDORSED
Forty-Seven Sought the Thirty-Dol.
lar-a-Month Position at the
Morgue.

With perhaps half a dozen jobs lying
idle In this District of Columbia, there are
just three thousand FIVE hundred appli-
cants for the places. with more coming
and lots more in sight when those are
filled, and more besides The Hobbies OF
the commissioners office are filled every
morning with men wanting jobs. wives
with husbands who need jobs and messen-
gers carrying notes from indorsers of job
hunters. The clerks in DR.. Tindalrs office
have as one of their largest jobs the
filing of applications from men who want
jobs.
And, what is more. nearly every job
hunter has a congressman behind him
1t Is a poor job hunter who has not at
least one representative back Of him, and
those poor unfortunates who have merely
some other prominent but totally private
citizen are the mere dregs of the job
hunting world.
When it was announced that the Com
mlssioners wanted a score or so of burlies
to guard the workhouse prisoners as
they build their new reformatory and
workhouse at OccOquan it would seem
down just such position. The letters
came Hooking in from every county in
the Old Dominion. Coupled with the let
tiers came Endorsements from statesmen
whose names are generally connected
with higher things than forty or fifty
dollar month jobs But, as was OBJ
served in the District building frequently,
one must look after ones constituency
and Congress very carefully left the Dis
trlct out of the civil service.
Prompt Applicants.
act IrIa
none of the $500 applicants with their
ten thousand prominent signatures in
dorsed upon their plea had asked for the
thirty-dollar-a-month job of assistant to
the morgue master. AS it was pointed
out in news item Sunday that the
duties were light and pleasant there were
just forty-seven applicants by $50 the
next business morning. And still they
come Just to choke off the rush the re-
porter who CLEANED the original story
was asked by one of the Commissioners
please to announce the fact that the Job
went to the first man who asked for it,
However. they are still coming in twos
ana threes. Nearly all of them ask to
see Commissioner Rudolph Recently
Waldo Hibbs. secretary to Commissioner
Rudolph, has learned the secret of SPOT
ting an applicant for assistant morgue
master and chases him down the hall to
Ralph Pratt. who guards the uncrossed
portals OF Commissioner JOhnStOn's Of
nce There the applicants die a slow
death, while Mr.. Pratt tells them that
the only job left in the District building
is the job of distraining Jumps of ice
from icemen who won't pay their per-
sonal tax bills.
A Plum-Ccmparatively Speaking.
There was plum in the STRENGTHENING
department-that is. plum comparative
ly speaking. 1t was NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS.
a-year job. There must have been a
hundred applicants for it. Perhaps not
all of them called on Supt. Wood and
asked for it. but certainly a hundred
persons had their eyes on the job.
One man had sixteen senators and rep
resentatives back of him. Another had
great personal influence with Supt. WoOd
Another one had this and another one
had that. The list of sixteen senators
and representatives might some day sell
at great figure for the mere auto
graphs alone.
But did the man get the plum? No, in
deed. He is going around telling people
now that the person who got the plum
was a man whose name was sent down
to the District building by the President.